<a href=http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-me-ocean30jul30,1,4515399,full.story?coll=la-news-environment&ctrack=1&cset=true target=_blank>Original article by the LA Times </a>
The dark water spun to the surface like an undersea cyclone. From 80 feet below, the swirling mixture of partially treated sewage spewed from a 5-foot-wide pipe off the coast of Hollywood, Fla., dubbed the "poop chute" by divers and fishermen.
Fish swarmed at the mouth â€" blue tangs and chubs competing for particles in the wastewater.
Marine ecologist Brian Lapointe and research assistant Rex "Chip" Baumberger, wearing wetsuits and breathing air from scuba tanks, swam to the base of the murky funnel cloud to collect samples. The effluent meets state and federal standards but is still rich in nitrogen, phosphorous and other nutrients.
By Lapointe's calculations, every day about a billion gallons of sewage in South Florida are pumped offshore or into underground aquifers that seep into the ocean. The wastewater feeds a green tide of algae and bacteria that is helping to wipe out the remnants of Florida's 220 miles of coral, the world's third largest barrier reef.
In addition, fertilizer washes off sugar cane fields, livestock compounds and citrus farms into Florida Bay.
"You can see the murky green water, the green pea soup loaded with organic matter," said Lapointe, a marine biologist at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution in Fort Pierce, Fla. "All that stuff feeds the algae and bacterial diseases that are attacking corals."
Government officials thought they were helping in the early 1990s when they released fresh water that had been held back by dikes and pumps for years. They were responding to the recommendations of scientists who, at the time, blamed the decline of ocean habitats on hypersalinity â€" excessively salty seawater.
The fresh water, laced with farm runoff rich in nitrogen and other nutrients, turned Florida's gin-clear waters cloudy. Seaweed grew fat and bushy.
It was a fatal blow for many struggling corals, delicate animals that evolved to thrive in clear, nutrient-poor saltwater. So many have been lost that federal officials in May added what were once the two most dominant types â€" elkhorn and staghorn corals â€" to the list of species threatened with extinction. Officials estimate that 97% of them are gone.
Sewage and farm runoff kill corals in various ways.
Algae blooms deny them sunlight essential for their survival.
The nutrients in sewage and fertilizer make bacteria grow wildly atop corals, consuming oxygen and suffocating the animals within.
A strain of bacteria found in human intestines, Serratia marcescens, has been linked to white pox disease, one of a host of infectious ailments that have swept through coral reefs in the Florida Keys and elsewhere.
The germ appears to come from leaky septic tanks, cesspits and other sources of sewage that have multiplied as the Keys have grown from a collection of fishing villages to a stretch of bustling communities with 80,000 year-round residents and 4 million visitors a year.
Scientists discovered the link by knocking on doors of Keys residents, asking to use their bathrooms. They flushed bacteria marked with tracers down toilets and found them in nearby ocean waters in as little as three hours.
Nearly everything in the Keys seems to be sprouting green growths, even an underwater sculpture known as Christ of the Abyss, placed in the waters off Key Largo in the mid-1960s as an attraction for divers and snorkelers. Dive-shop operators scrub the bronze statue with wire brushes from time to time, but they have trouble keeping up with the growth.
Lapointe began monitoring algae at Looe Key in 1982. He picked the spot, a 90-minute drive south of Key Largo, because its clear waters, colorful reef and abundance of fish made it a favorite site for scuba divers. Today, the corals are in ruins, smothered by mats of algae.
Although coral reefs cover less than 1% of the ocean floor, they are home to at least 2 million species, or about 25% of all marine life. They provide nurseries for fish and protect oceanfront homes from waves and storm surges.
Looe Key was once a sandy shoal fringed by coral. The Key has now slipped below the water's surface, a disappearing act likely to be repeated elsewhere in these waters as pounding waves breach dying reefs. Scientists predict that the Keys ultimately will have to be surrounded by sea walls as ocean levels rise.
With a gentle kick of his fins through murky green water, Lapointe maneuvered around a coral mound that resembled the intricate, folded pattern of a brain. Except that this brain was being eroded by the coralline equivalent of flesh-eating disease.
"It rips my heart out," Lapointe said. "It's like coming home and seeing burglars have ransacked your house, and everything you cherished is gone."
