coral (4)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/21/3118234.htm

 

By Abbie Thomas for ABC Science Online

Updated Fri Jan 21, 2011 1:54pm AEDT

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Silt flowing from the Fitzroy River into Keppel Bay, east of Rockhampton

Silt flowing from the Fitzroy River into Keppel Bay, east of Rockhampton (NASA: NASA)

Researchers say the recent Queensland floods are carrying tonnes of fresh water, nutrients and pesticides to the ocean, placing enormous stress on the Great Barrier Reef.

For the past five weeks, plumes of silt-laden fresh water have been flowing onto reefs off the Queensland coast.

The impact is so massive it can be seen in NASA satellite photographs.

Researchers list the Keppel Islands near Rockhampton, Moreton Bay and Fraser Island, north of Brisbane, as being most at risk.

Dr Alison Jones, from Central Queensland University in Rockhampton, has seen first-hand the impact of the floods on corals in Keppel Bay.

"You can't see anything at all from above," she said.

"As you take the camera down, it looks like a big brown soupy mess.

"Deeper down the water is a bit clearer and you can see bleached white [coral] colonies appearing out of the gloom."

Dr Jones checked five islands and found stressed coral around all of them.

"Halfway Island was much worse than North Keppel. It was just dead coral, killed by the fresh water," she said.

"There wasn't really a single thing alive.

"There also seems to be some temperature bleaching, believe it or not, from the ocean being warm, which is completely unrelated to the flooding."

Dr Britta Shaffelke, a researcher at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, says wind direction over the next few days will be crucial in determining the extent of the damage.

"At the moment the mud plume [from the Fitzroy River] is confined to the Keppel Bay area," she said.

"However if the wind turns around from the south east to the north, the plume might reach much further to the outer reefs such as Heron Island."

Floods damage corals in a number of ways.

Corals cannot survive in freshwater because their physiology is adapted to salt water.

Silt is also clouding the water and blocking out sunlight, stopping corals from photosynthesising and feeding themselves.

Nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous can kick start toxic algal blooms, which strip oxygen from the water and at the same time, provide food for the larvale of crown of thorns starfish.

Pesticides carried in floodwater call also kill corals.

Researchers are most concerned about the impact of the sediments.

"What has changed is that the load of sediment in the rivers has increased 4- to 10-fold since pre-European times," said AIMS scientist Dr Katharina Fabricius.

"Reefs exposed to high levels of nutrients and sediments have up to five-fold higher cover of seaweeds (which can smother corals) and half the biodiversity of species of coral - these are the long term effects of these floods," she says.

Dugongs at risk

Meanwhile, further south in Moreton Bay, experts are worried about the long-term impact on dugongs. In 1996, a flood left many dugongs starving, as sediment and nutrients overwhelmed and killed the seagrass beds in the area.

"For Morteton bay, the flooding event last week was significantly bigger for sediment deposition and fresh water than the flood of 1996," says Dr Eva Abal, chief scientific officer at the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

"My expectation about the impact on the bay is that we will experience some seagrass loss, but it also depends on how quickly water clears up."

Shaffelke also points out that there are unusually vast amounts of turbid freshwater off the coast of Brisbane.

"That hasn't happened for many, many decades in the Brisbane area, so many plants and animals will imediately die or be very stressed," she says. "I expect there to be quite serious impacts as well."

"In relation to the floods in Rockhampton … that is certainly not typical or happens very often. For both humans and the enviroment this is an extraordinary event.

"For the marine environment, the events are still unfolding. The highest rainfall is actually in February, so we are certainly not at the end of this season."

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From George Ryskind, a bio-chemical engineer at Northwestern University: "The warning signs of an impending planetary catastrophe — of such great magnitude that the human mind has difficulty grasping it -- would be the appearance of large fissures or rifts splitting open the ocean floor, a rise in the elevation of the seabed, and the massive venting of methane and other gases into the surrounding water. Such occurrences can lead to the rupture of the methane bubble containment; it can then permit the methane to breach the subterranean depths and undergo an explosive decompression as it catapults into the Gulf waters." All three warning signs are documented to be occurring in the Gulf.
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Oil Spill Done to Conceal Buckling Seabed
From <jadinardo@optonline.net>
Date Wednesday, June 23, 2010 11:03 am

. . . . . ., as this brown dwarf star accelerates into our inner Solar System, being gravitationally attracted to our Sun, its enormous magnetic forces are increasingly boiling and churning Earth's magnetic core, while this brown dwarf star's enormous gravitational pull is plucking upon Earth's crustal surface, buckling seabeds, such as in the Coral Sea and in the Gulf of Mexico, generating sinkholes all over China, and generating unprecedentedly frequent high-magnitude earthquakes. At least three years ago, Mark, a veteran of the Persian Gulf War who maintains contact with certain acquaintances in the government, told me that a geologist friend with the U.S. Geological Survey told him that they were surveying the seabed of the Gulf of Mexico for great oil drilling opportunities, and that they expect to see land masses rising up from the Gulf of Mexico seabed. So, it seems that pieces of this puzzle are fitting together. The global power elite foresaw the Gulf of Mexico seabed rising, were overcome with oil greed, but knew that in the next few years they would have to flee the Gulf when the newly popping undersea volcanoes start to break out, like hives, all over the planet. And they knew that, in order to forestall (not preempt) public panic, they would have to make it look as if corporate recklessness had caused the Gulf of Mexico to burst up, bleeding . . . because if the people were to discern that natural disasters are exploding all over the Earth, then these power elite controllers of the masses would have the reigns of global enslavement abruptly yanked out of their greedy fists, as the docile masses panic into a state of crazed chaos and defiant rejection of tyrannical tethers. The power elite are scared, because they know that there is no way that they can keep the global masses from panicking, as this approaching brown dwarf star (formally named "Planet X" by the world's community of astronomers) increasingly molests Earth's land masses, seabeds and molten magnetic core. The elite can only forestall public panic for a short while. And it is becoming conspicuous that their Plan B is to go underground, a fact which Gov. Jesse Ventura has vividly documented with his TruTV film footage of the elite's elaborate underground cities beneath the Denver Airport, and deep within the bowels of Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado. This brown dwarf star's plasmatic (electrified gas) coma is both electrostatically and electromagnetically exciting the Sun, provoking the Sun to sneeze forth blasts of solar flares which the National Academy of Science and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration officially state will likely damage or destroy the world's power grids and the associated electronic global canopy overdraping modern civilization's luxurious bed of comfort. The result will be abrupt reversion to primitive life for anyone who can shelter themselves from the lethal solar scorching. Those of us who do not protect ourselves from the solar scorching will not have to worry about primitive living. Conversely, the power elite have long been prepared to weather the coming solar scorching by making us pay for their underground shelters. Although the N.A.S. and N.A.S.A. say that 2012 is the year to expect this solar scorching, the Sun will not switch from normal to scorching in an instant, like the flipping of a light switch. Rather, the solar scorching is already gradually intensifying. It is imperative that we, the citizens of the human race, establish a widespread correspondence network, in an effort to protect ourselves from the coming scorching, since the power elite told Gov. Jesse Ventura that the people are welcome to knock all day on those multi-ton underground steel doors.

John DiNardo planetxnow@yahoo.com
~~ The Movie, KNOWING graphically depicts this solar scorching ~~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j8nuUVByrU

Remember to view the Washington Post announcement, attached above.
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