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| EXTENDED
INTERVIEW: BILLY CAUSEY |
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 December 2004  |
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Billy Causey, superintendent
of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, traces the causes of
reef decline for Betty Ann Bowser of the NewsHour's Science Unit.
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BILLY CAUSEY: I've been the superintendent of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary since 1991. I've been managing National Marine Sanctuary since May of 1983, 21 years. BETTY ANN BOWSER: What have you seen happen in those areas where you've been managing all these years? BILLY CAUSEY: Over the years we've seen declines in the coral health itself. We've seen corals succumb to various diseases. We've seen corals decline in overall health for various reasons. But we have seen some successes as a result of having some closed areas. We've seen some of the fish population and lobster come back. We've seen some improvement, just be taking some management actions. But it's the very home and habitat that's so important to the reef fish communities, of corals themselves that we're seeing a steady decline. Not only are we seeing decline here in the Florida Keys, but we're seeing it throughout the Caribbean, we're seeing it throughout the world. |
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| Reef problems at the Florida Keys | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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BETTY ANN BOWSER: What's causing all of this? BILLY CAUSEY: The problems affecting corals here in the Florida Keys are coming at us from the global scale, regional and local scale. At the local level, the things that we're seeing happen are water quality degradation, we're seeing nutrients coming from storm water runoff, or from the way we treat our wastewater. We're also seeing overfishing, where the reef fish structure, the community has changed. We no longer have some of the larger species out there, larger grouper or snapper. We've seen changes in shifts in the overall reef fish population from a, a more healthy pristine area to areas that are degraded in some instances. We've also seen a great deal of habitat destruction, either from direct impacts, from boat groundings or anchors or pilings coming from overuse, too much use from some of the reefs. These are things that are happening at the local scale. But we're also seeing problems from our water quality, from the near shore waters of the Florida Keys. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Pollution? BILLY CAUSEY: There's a halo of pollution surrounding the Florida Keys. We're seeing nutrients that are coming off the land. We're seeing storm water runoff, introducing nutrients to our near shore waters. We have a large number of Linerboard boats throughout the Keys. There are any number of sources of nutrients into our local near shore waters. Whether those nutrients are reaching the relief is a matter of debate with some scientists, but clearly, what's happening out here at Looe Key Reef and what's happening out on the reefs is different than it was 10, 15 or 20 years ago. We're seeing more use of the reefs, we're seeing more impacts, physical impacts, as well as we're seeing changes in the reef fish community. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Why have the reefs run down so rapidly? BILLY CAUSEY: What we started seeing in the '80s was a decline in the health of the corals. And we were able to, very early on, link that decline with various environmental events. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Like what? BILLY CAUSEY: From 1983 through the 1990s, we had 10 of the warmest years in recorded time. Seven of those occurred in the 1980s. Three of those occurred in the '90s. And now, into the 2000s, we're already seeing temperatures that exceeded what we saw in 1990. We're seeing an elevation in our sea surface temperatures. Clearly this is happening around the world. It's not only happening here in, in the Atlantic and the Caribbean, but it's also happening all over the Indo-West Pacific. And what we've seen are incremental changes. Now, if you take temperature, if you add the temperature stress to the corals and you add any of the other stressors, whether it be nutrients or physical impacts, all of these are part of the multiple stressors that are pushing corals to the very brink of, of destruction. |
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| Managing reefs | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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BETTY ANN BOWSER: I can't understand how politically, (inaudible), people dumping sewage into the ocean could be managed. But how do you manage a hole in the ozone layer? BILLY CAUSEY: We're going to have to be able to manage things at the local regional and global scale. And clearly, it's going to take all of us focusing on the problems that are occurring on a global scale, as far as climate change. Right now, I don't think we can go back and link those to any one human driven event, but we clearly have to start documenting it, we have to get a better understanding of what's happening on a global scale. It wasn't until the 1990s that we started seeing coral bleaching as one of the major stressors on coral reefs. We have double stress affecting the corals, whether it's cold temperatures or warm temperatures like we're seeing right now. We're seeing extremely warm surface sea surface temperatures, and it wasn't until we started seeing that, that we started communicating on a global scale with our colleagues around the world, and we were able to start coming up with some of the ideas as to how we can manage for the future. There's a lot that you can do with coral bleaching. There's a lot that managers can do and different things that we can put into action. We don't know if this is part of a natural cycle, or we don't know if this is something that humans have introduced to our world today. Bottom line is I have to take some kind of action as a manager, and I think that my colleagues around the world would agree. The one thing that we can do is get the support of, of the local dive communities. Get the support of the people that make their living off the coral reefs and get the support of the, the people that love coral reefs, whether they visit them or not, to start paying attention to what's happening on a global scale. The coral reefs are the canary in the coal mine. And that canary right now is on the bottom of the cage and is gasping. BETTY ANN BOWSER: How can you manage things that are unmanageable? Like, you can't manage and increase your temperature of the water. BILLY CAUSEY: The thing that we can do, when corals are bleaching or when we're having an event like that, as a manager, I'll call the local dive shops, we start networking with the local community, and we start getting them to take pressure off the reef. It's one of the things that we can do immediately to lessen that physical pressure on the coral reefs while they're stressed. We've seen a great deal of response, a very positive response from the dive industry. BETTY ANN BOWSER: So they take their divers elsewhere? BILLY CAUSEY: Well, or either they caution their divers to not touch coral, which they shouldn't be doing anyway, but it's an opportunity for them to really pay attention to the problems affecting the corals. This in turn is something that we can do locally, right here on this reef. The other thing that we can do is continue to try to support, research and monitoring that helps us understand what's happening, so we can start unraveling some of the questions and get to some of the answers that we as managers need. Right now, to make any kind of moves or to start addressing what's happening on the global scale is going to take a tremendous amount of leadership and it's going to take leadership at levels much higher than mine, but in order to take that action, they're going to have more information than just intuitive feeling. It's going to have to be more than anecdotal. It's going to take science, it's going to take research, working with managers to get the kinds of answers to questions that we need to be posing. The big thing that we're recognizing is that scientists and managers need to be working cooperatively, hand in hand, to where the managers are presenting the questions to the scientists, or the scientists in turn are presenting questions back to the managers, and that the two are collaborating in this research and monitoring process. Once we start getting the answers, once we can start zeroing in on the problems that are affecting corals, then and only then do I feel that we can start taking the kind of action at the global scale to address what's happening on our coral reefs. But what's happening on coral reefs is just a small part of the overall picture. We're also seeing changes in the Arctic. We're seeing changes in the Antarctic. Now what's happening in between, in the more temperate areas? Well it was no accident that in 1997 and 1998, at a time when fish were bellying up all over the Caribbean, from bookinella [ph], a form of disease that was killing the fish, that we had diphtheria occurring in the estuaries along the East Coast, or that we had harmful algal blooms in China, or that we had red tides off the West Coast of Florida. All of these are in my estimation, some way coupled to one another. And it's coming along and being able to tease those out, one at a time, and to identify the various stressors that are affecting the water quality to identify the very problems that are affecting the health of the corals and, going from the broader global scale, right down to the microbial scale in looking at what is happening on the coral community itself. BETTY ANN BOWSER: If you could do what they've done in Australia which is to, as of next month, take one-third, 33 percent of the Great Barrier Reef and make it a no-take zone and sanctuary and all kinds of protection, would that make a difference here in the Keys? BILLY CAUSEY: Absolutely. If we could take areas like here in the Florida Keys and set areas aside where you have no impacts whatsoever -- BETTY ANN BOWSER: No divers, no fishing. BILLY CAUSEY: Nothing. Just set areas aside and, and what you need, what we need to be able to do -- BETTY ANN BOWSER: I mean if you could take 33 percent of all these reef areas, along from Miami, down south, and you could take, say, one-third of all of the space, no fishing, no diving, no snorkeling, no people, could that turn things around? BILLY CAUSEY: If we were able to set 33 percent of the Florida Keys National Sanctuary aside, and protect the corals that are more resilient, to protect corals for future generations, that would be a major management step forward. And it is something that would benefit our coral reefs enormously. One of the things that we need to be able to do though is isolate and identify the more resilient areas. And we need to come in and find the areas that would be the healthiest areas to set aside, and to keep out all activities and to, and to really take a strong action on how we manage those areas. We've already established this nation's largest, fully protected area (inaudible), the Tortougus Ecological Reserve. In the Tortougus South we have eliminated diving in that area. In Tortougus North, the only thing that we do allow is scuba diving and the divers can't even touch the bottom and that's over, over 91 square nautical miles of area. And between the two, we have areas that are set aside now that we're monitoring and we're able to see what kind of benefits that we're going to gain from having these fully protected areas. But what we need to be able to do is to come to areas in the middle Keys, areas that are more threatened by human use on a daily basis and set some areas aside and, and really be able to set large areas aside for the long-term protection. |
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| Monitoring changes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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BETTY ANN BOWSER: How has things changed on this reef since the last time you were in the water which was what, about a month ago? BILLY CAUSEY: In just a month, yeah, we were just talking about that. It may be that we were using scuba this time, but I will go ahead and say in a month's timeframe, it appears to me that I'm seeing more coral diseases here. Now this is the time of the season, in the late spring, early summer when we start seeing more coral diseases. As the water temperatures start warming up, you start seeing some changes, you get longer light days, longer solar days, we start seeing changes, and it could be all a part of that process. But while we were in the water on this very short dive, we saw black band disease, we saw a number of different types of diseases that scientists are still working on and, and it was very disturbing to me. It, some days I come out here and I just want to celebrate and some days I come out here and I just want to cry. And I've been visiting this reef for well over 30 years, and I've seen enormous declines in the last 15 years. And during that time it has been a national marine sanctuary. The sanctuary status has really helped to keep this reef more preserved than some of the areas outside of sanctuary status. And I think we need to always remember that the more protection you can provide an area, the healthier it will be. BETTY ANN BOWSER: How much of a problem is septic tanks and all of the sewage from, that you have over in the Keys? BILLY CAUSEY: In the Florida Keys, we have over 25,000 septic tanks. We have 7-to-9,000 illegal cesspits. We have over 900 shallow injection wells. BETTY ANN BOWSER: I understand what septic tanks are, but what's a cesspool pit? Is that where they dump the sewage? BILLY CAUSEY: No, a cesspit is where they come in. A septic tank, you know they dig a hole in the ground, and they dig it in fossil coral and they sink a big cement vault into that and your water goes in and your, your solids go in, and then it's like a, a (inaudible) liquids, you cap off the top and go through a drain field and then drain down through a drain field. Cesspits are just dug, literally dug right into the ground and anything going into it, all of the, all the liquids just go into the groundwater, into the water flow. BETTY ANN BOWSER: So without getting specific on all the numbers of those different things, how big a problem is sewage in terms of what's happening with the quality of the water? BILLY CAUSEY: The, the way we deal with our wastewater in the Keys is a serious problem. We still put our waste right into the porous limestone and it works its way to the nearest shore waters very quickly. BETTY ANN BOWSER: And what impact? I mean I know there are people, that can also become a very political subject, especially for you being in the position you're in, but what do you think? I mean on this debate, whether it's hurting the reefs or not? BILLY CAUSEY: I really feel that anything we can do to lessen any impact to the coral reefs will benefit the reefs. I feel that being able to get rid of the halo of nutrients that we see around the keys, they'll have an ultimate benefit to the outer reef track. But I don't think that nutrients are our only problem. But we definitely can address nutrients. It's something that we should be doing, whether it's for health reasons, or whether it's for just simple property values. I think when I moved to the Keys in the early '70s, I was able to swim in my canals, and now, yes, you can swim in your canals, but it's not nearly as much fun or clear as it was in the early '70s. So we've seen changes and, and I really feel very strongly that we can do something to eliminate wastewater and to go to improved technology. There are things that we can do by putting neighborhoods on central treatment plants, by increasing the level of treatment that we're giving our wastewater, and eliminating every source of nutrients, getting into our near shore waters as possible. One other thing comes from storm water runoff. Twenty percent of the nutrients that we have recorded here in the sanctuary comes from storm water runoff. And that's coming, that's coming off of our highways. When we built the highways down here in the '60s and '50s, '60s and '70s, we didn't think about the need to capture the water or rainwater and have it be leached through areas that would purify the water before it got to our mutual waters. We're starting to do that now. The Department of Transportation is starting to require permits. Anytime you have any road construction, they're put in areas to collect the rainwater, so very slowly, we're starting to see some of the tools that have been identified in the water quality protection program that is managed by the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States, and we're starting to see some of the technology put into place that would, has been identified. But we're only dealing with wastewater and storm water run-off. What about the things we put on our lawns? What about the pesticides? What about the mosquito screen that we have in our near shore waters? All of these are cumulative. All of these are adding stressors to our near shore environment that ultimately will affect the outer coral reef track. The scientists will lead the way to getting the answers to questions that are posed to them by the managers. So it's really clear that scientists and managers need to work cooperatively around the world in trying to unravel some of the mysteries that affect the coral reefs. One thing that we've been able to do is, is establish a type of collaboration and, and one meeting in particular that's so important is the international coral reef symposium that's held every four years. When that symposium first started being held, it was mostly to scientists talking to scientists. And then in the mid to latter part of the '80s, a bunch of us managers started intervening and saying, well, you need to be talking about management. And now management is just sort of overwhelmed, portions of it and it's such a huge symposium. But it's very important for scientists and managers to be at the same meeting at the same places hearing one another talk about the problems, the challenges that are facing managers, but also for the scientists to start thinking about the ways to help get the answers to those questions and those problems. But it's science and management working hand in hand that's ultimately going to give us the solutions as to what we need to implement and the way of management action. |
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| Finding answers | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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BETTY ANN BOWSER: Do you ever worry that science won't find the answers in time? BILLY CAUSEY: I worry all the time that scientists will not be able to find the answers to the questions that we have in time. But definitely we do need to keep moving forward. We need to be more precautionary and more adaptive about what we're doing. Sometimes we tend to wait until we have the final answer from scientists, but as a manager, I'm starting to take action with just a little bit of information and I think that's going to be true around the world if we're going to be able to save coral reefs for the long term, and that is that we're going to have to start responding with the best science we have at the time and then be ready to adapt as we get new information and new science. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Give me an example of where you've taken, not the ultimate science, but science if you had a reasonable (inaudible) of assurance and how that works (inaudible). BILLY CAUSEY: One of the things that we did just last year is that we had a problem. We had a coral disease outbreak on some reefs in the upper Keys and in the lower Keys, and down off the Tortougus. And what I was able to do as a manager is I closed those areas down for over two months, while the scientists continued to work and study those areas, and, and we were able to close those small areas down, it did have an impact. It had an economic impact on some snorkel boats that use those reefs exclusively. But that's one of the things that managers can do when working very closely with scientists. The other thing is dealing with water quality issues. If I have a scientist tell me that they know absolutely that it's nitrogen or phosphorus that's killing the coral reefs out here, then I can use that information to leverage the kind of action that we need to take to make a difference. It's going to take anywhere form $900 million to a billion U.S. dollars to retrofit the infrastructure for wastewater here in the Keys. Before we have that kind of money spent, and it's going to be coming out of the taxpayer's pocket, we're going to have to have some pretty darn good answers, but we already know that it's not healthy to dump wastewater in our near shore waters. We already know that we get 3 million visitors to the Florida Keys every year that spends 13.3 million visitor days. While they're here in the Keys, they spend 1.2 billion U.S. dollars and that's before the economic multipliers kick in. This is a hugely viable resource, both environmentally as well as economically. We cannot afford to lose it. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Tell us, explain what the sanctuary is, how big it is, or how small it is, however you want to look at that issue. And a little bit about it here. BILLY CAUSEY: Well, the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary is 29,000 square nautical miles in size, roughly 9,600 square kilometers. And it is managed through a marine zoning concept and that is that we have five different types of zones that have been set aside to help us better manage the area. We have sanctuary preservation areas, research only areas, ecological reserves. We all like management areas; in all the existing management areas, which is the way that we can still allow activities, we can still allow people to enjoy their jet skis or personal watercraft and still have areas that are set aside for fishermen, areas that are set aside for kettle nesting, beaches or (inaudible). Marine zoning is a concept that was pioneered by our friends and colleagues in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. And it's something that we had somewhat modeled after them, and we have found tremendous successes with the marine zoning. In the sanctuary we have a variety of different habitats. We have (inaudible) fringe islands, we have a large amount of sea grasses, some of the most expansive sea grass communities in the west hemisphere. We also have patcheries, trees, shallow patcheries, offshore patcheries, we have the shallow bank reefs, we have the intermediate to deeper habitat, so there are a variety of different habitats that help comprise the natural features of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. We've tried to implement in this sanctuary the concept of ecosystem management and that is what we're looking at what's affecting the coral reefs, beginning on shore. And in fact, here in the Florida Keys, we're looking as far north as central Florida, as the area that is influencing the health of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Although we are at the southern end of that, it is important that we recognize that what's happening around Orlando, what's happening in Lake Okeechobee, what's happening to the Everglades Agriculture Area ultimately has an impact on the Florida Keys. By knowing that and applying ecosystem management principles, we're able to make a difference. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Compare the problems they're having with their reefs in Australia to the problems that you're having here? BILLY CAUSEY: OK, sure. In Australia they're starting to see some of the same problems that we're experiencing in the Atlantic in the Caribbean. And that is the coral bleaching really started in the '90s in Australia, whereas here in this hemisphere, we started seeing coral bleaching as early as 1983 on a massive scale. What they're also seeing in Australia now are more coral diseases. We started having coral disease problems here in the mid-1980s. ... I would say that we're seeing about a 10 to 15 year lag between what's happening here in the Atlantic and the Caribbean and as opposed to what's happening in Australia. The problems that we're seeing now are things that they're going to be seeing in the future. BETTY ANN BOWSER: And where do you come in on, or the end of the world is coming on Friday, and those who say if we do the right things, we can save the reefs. BILLY CAUSEY: I really feel that we have to keep hope and maintain hope as far as the coral reefs. Coral reefs have been around for 400 million years and I think they've going to be here even after we're long and gone. But I really see that humans have influenced the health of coral reefs in a very short timeframe. I've seen changes just in the last 20 to 30 years, that this makes me want to cry at times, really is upsetting to see the changes. But I really want to show that there's hope. And in fact, what we're seeing some coral recruitment going on right now here at Looe Key, going to the more simpler coral. Right now we're seeing some new coral colonies and new babies starting to develop right here on the backside of Looe Key. It's really exciting to go out and see some of the new baby coral starting to grow. That tells me as a manger that our water quality is still, still (inaudible), we can sustain coral growth. It tells me that corals are still recruiting to this area. It also tells me that corals can in fact, given the right conditions, given the right protection, will in fact grow and survive. We're seeing changes take place on our shallow coral reefs. We're seeing changes take place more rapidly on shallow reefs than some of the deeper reefs. Some areas are more resilient, more resistant to change than others. We really need to be focusing on the resiliency. We need to be focusing on some of the healthier reefs in setting those aside, but we also recognize, and I think many of my colleagues around the, the world recognize that we can make a difference. That people can make a difference in protecting coral reefs. The main thing is to address the water quality issues, stop the habitat degradation and reduce overfishing. |
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The NewsHour Science Unit is funded by a grant from:  The National Science Foundation. Reports are produced solely by the NewsHour and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF. |
