This year, there’s a global effort afoot to protect the declining coral reefs. It’s called the International Year of the Reef, a worldwide campaign to raise awareness about the value and importance of coral reefs and threats to their sustainability. The International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS), which takes place every four years, will bring together scientists, resource managers, users, conservationists, economists and educators to advance coral reef science, management and conservation. This year’s ICRS takes place in Fort Lauderdale July 7 to 11, at Nova University.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) Coral Reef Conservation Program is launching its own public awareness campaign on coral reefs.

“DEP is proud to join the world in celebrating International Year of the Reef 2008 and the commitment to responsible efforts to ensure the health and vitality of these precious treasures,” said DEP Director of Coastal and Aquatic Managed Areas Stephanie Bailenson.

Too many Floridians don’t know what precious reef ecosystems are right off their beaches. So Southeast Floridians should expect to see two different 30-second Public Service Announcements about coral reefs in the future. Airing in both English and Spanish, the PSAs will run throughout 2008 on local television and radio stations in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Martin counties. The program also produced a video on coral reef protection for area visitors, 150 activities for area students, and a coral reef training workshop for teachers.

That’s great. But our guess is that the PSAs and activities for students will assiduously avoid discussing the fact that the DEP’s Department of Beaches and Coastal Systems recently caved into political pressure and will allow the Town of Palm Beach to conduct a so-called “beach nourishment” project that will bury at least 8 acres of coral-studded nearshore reefs around the Lake Worth Pier, on a beach that by their own acknowledgement is not critically eroded. It’s also doubtful that they’ll praise organizations such as the Surfrider Foundation or the Snook Foundation for suing them for issuing a bogus permit.

The DEP-generated PSAs should delve into the fact that Broward beach projects buried significant amounts of what is arguably the most robust elkhorn coral reef left on the Florida mainland, maybe with an apology and some penance in the form of pledge to require additional mitigation. But they probably won’t, even though groups such as the Cry of the Eater, Reef Rescue Surfrider Foundation, Broward Dive Association and the best geologists and reef ecologists in the world warned of the inevitability. The DEPs weak sand compatibility regs allow sediment to be dredged from the continental shelf that is usually either so fine that it washes offshore onto the reefs quickly, or is crushed into carbonate mud by waves, causing chronic turbidity. If these issues won’t make the PSAs, maybe they’ll be addressed at the ICRS. The scientists who signed on as consultants hired to make sure the reefs wouldn’t be impacted in unanticipated ways will be there.

Education is good. More awareness hopefully will give rise to more of a political will to protect our reefs. But they’ve only got 60 seconds, and it would take a week-long documentary to show voters all the ways that the DEP and other agencies have failed in protecting our coral reefs, or more accurately, have been prevented by our political leadership from doing so.

--Terry Gibson