57 



2.2.6 



FLORIDA APPROACHES TO MARINE MONITORING 



Dr. Sandra L. Vargo 

 Florida Institute of Oceanography 



830 First Street 

 South St. Petersburg, FL 33701 



The Florida Institute of Oceanography (FIO) is an administrative umbrella organization of the State University 

 System of Florida representing the geographically dispersed marine science research community in Florida. The 

 consortium members are the nine public universities, the private University of Miami, Florida Department of 

 Natural Resources, and the Florida Sea Grant College. The Institute provides a forum for initiating and 

 coordinating research vital to the State's responsible conservation and management of the marine environment 

 utilizing the wealth of expertise of its membership and other educational and research organizations. In fulfilling 

 its mission the FIO has long recognized the value of sustained ecological research. This research is necessary 

 for understanding the functioning of ecosystems and for distinguishing natural variability from man-induced 

 impacts. This research must be done on a time and geographic scale appropriate to the ecosystem in question. 

 Funding cycles rarely encompass the time course of natural phenomena such as storms, diseases, and 

 oceanographic-atmospheric events such as ENSO and processes such as global warming trends and sea level rise. 

 Additionally, research at a single site cannot be extrapolated to draw conclusion about the broader system as a 

 whole. 



These considerations of scale lead to an integrating concept in Florida. This concept is based on the design of 

 Florida's water management districts which were determined by hydrological zones. The goal of this design was 

 to manage water resources in a manner appropriate to the geographic scale of the resource. The FIO proposes 

 to extend this concept to coastal ocean management with management zones based on biological and physical 

 factors (Figure 5) allowing for common research methodology and a coordinated management strategy. 



In initiating this plan the FIO has targeted two areas in Florida for pilot studies - the West Florida Shelf and the 

 Florida Keys reef tract. The West Florida Shelf program is in the preliminary stages of development and is not 

 yet funded. However, the need is apparent when one considers the high productivity of the region (including 

 periodic red tides with major ecosystem impact), its great areal extent, and the relative paucity of information 

 available. The major studies in the region were funded by Minerals Management Service to evaluate potential 

 environmental impacts of oil and gas exploration and production activities in the region. These studies were 

 primarily descriptive in nature and not process oriented. In addition, there was no linkage between the water 

 column and the benthos. 



The FIO has received funding for the program in the Florida Keys from the John D. and Catharine T. 

 MacArthur Foundation. The program will focus on the reasons for the decline in live coral coverage along the 

 reef track in the past ten years, keeping in mind that the reef track is the down stream element in a mosaic of 

 ecosystems commencing at Lake Okeechobee. At least four hypotheses have been advanced to date to account 

 for the decline of live coral and are as follows. 



• nutrification due to agricultural runoff and increased population; 



• input of trace metals and pesticide from the same sources; 



• stress from the coral bleaching events in 1983 and 1987; 



• some combination of the above. 



The research team has designed a program taking into account the time and geographic scales necessary to 

 evaluate these various hypotheses. The establishment of five core research sites (Figure 6) is central to the 

 program. Initial plans are to utilize the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Marine 

 Sanctuary system and other protected areas where possible. The tentative sites planned are Biscayne National 

 Park, Key Largo Marine Sanctuary, Tennessee Reef, Looe Key Marine Sanctuary, and Fort Jefferson National 

 Monument. Each of these sites will be subject to long-term continuous monitoring of environmental parameters 

 such as incident and submarine irradiance, air temperature, wind speed, tide and wave height, water temperature 

 at several depths, fluorescence (chlorophyll a), turbidity, and conductivity. These monitoring stations will be 



