86 Papers from the Marine Biological Laboratory at Tortugas. 



there was a windrow, perhaps a yard wide, made up of these skeletons. 

 The number of skeletons in a linear yard (it was practically a square yard) 

 averages 75.7 for ten counts made at approximately equal distances through 

 the above-mentioned distance, or nearly 8,500 colonies for the whole area. 

 This area showed very clearly that the most destructive part of the storm 

 came from nearly northeast. On the outside of the reef, in the direction 

 indicated by the wash of the storm, only two living colonies of gorgonians 

 were found for as far off-shore as the water was sufficiently shallow to allow 

 one to wade about over the reef. Gorgonians were growing abundantly 

 over this area when it was visited in 1910, so the destruction had been almost 

 complete. That the great number of the colonies found in the windrow 

 on the beach had come from this shallow-water area was shown by the 

 fact that in deeper water on the outer portion of the reef there was little 

 evidence of the lessening of the number of colonies below the normal number 

 for such locations; the colonies here are always comparatively scattered, 

 never forming dense "thickets," as they do on the reefs in shallow water. 

 The very shallow water on the outside of the reefs contained a considerable 

 number of skeletons of Gorgonia flahellum and Plexaura flexjiosa, which 

 had been broken off from their supports and carried away from their original 

 location while still attached to a good-sized piece of coral rock. Apparently 

 these specim.ens had reached their present location at a time when the 

 wave-action had become insufficient to carry them over the crest of the reef 

 onto the beach on the lagoon side. By far the larger number of specimens 

 on the beach, on the lagoon side of the reef, were still attached to a piece of 

 coral rock, usually of small size. In almost every instance the skeleton 

 shows that the colony was complete when washed on shore. Any physical 

 injury undergone had not been to the extent of having branches broken ofif 

 or, in the case of G. flahelUim, having suffered any tearing of the blade-like 

 portion of the colony. 



On the east side of Loggerhead Key, where the greatest force of the storm 

 came across comparatively shallow water, the reef just mentioned being 

 about 3 miles distant, most of the specimens, when examined in January 

 191 1, had the usual spicule-bearing tissues present, although considerably 

 macerated in many instances. None of these colonies showed any con- 

 siderable amount of injury, such as the loss of branches or the tearing of the 

 Hving tissue from the skeleton. 



None of the common gorgonians of the Tortugas region can be kept 

 alive for any considerable time after they have been broken ofif from their 

 natural support and allowed to fall over into a horizontal position. When 

 such a colony is put into a live-car, where most of the other marine inverte- 

 brates and practically all of the sedentary Coelenterates can be kept alive 

 for an indefinite period, it will be only two or three days before maceration 

 sets in. It seems apparent, therefore, that the greatest destruction by 

 storms comes from the tearing of the gorgonian colonies from their natural 

 supports rather than from any laceration of the tissues. 



