Proposal to expand reef protection may take years to finish
A plan to expand the federally protected coral reef systems in the Gulf of Mexico may not be ready for approval by the Trump administration until early 2020, officials said Wednesday.
That means five years will have passed since officials first began discussing in 2015 expanding the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, located about 100 miles off the coast of Galveston.
The sanctuary designation, which prevents over-fishing and harassment of marine life in the area, currently stretches across 56 square miles, or three banks. In May, the sanctuary’s advisory council approved a proposal that would expand that area to 206 square miles, or 17 banks.
But officials have identified some potential tweaks. For example, the new plan actually would eliminate some of the protected area around Stetson Bank, one of the three current banks.
“There has not been a final decision how (to) proceed,” sanctuary Superintendent G.P. Schmahl said during a Wednesday advisory council meeting, adding that officials likely would adjust the Stetson Bank boundaries.
According to the Flower Garden Banks website, there are several more steps to go in the process. For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the 13 federally designated national marine sanctuaries, still must ask the Department of the Interior to analyze the plan for how it will impact energy and mineral resource development.
Multi-step process
NOAA also must collect public comments on the proposed rule for the expansion, which Schmahl said he hopes occurs in May 2019. The final decision is made by the Secretary of Commerce, but first Congress must be given a chance to comment.
The sanctuary is required to allow Congress 45 days to review the plan, in which they can comment or raise concerns, but they do not vote on it, officials said.
Schmahl said the plan won’t reach the Congressional review step until the end of 2019 or, more likely, the beginning of 2020.
The Flower Garden Banks was discovered by fishermen in the early 1900s and named for the brightly colored sponges, plants and other marine life visible below their boat.
About 100 years later, it’s still, mostly, in good shape — a rarity during a time when a quarter of coral reefs worldwide are considered damaged beyond repair. In fact, the sanctuary is home to some of the healthiest reefs in the region, which scientists say is because of its location: 70 to 115 miles off shore and 55 to 160 feet deep.
Adding more reef systems to the sanctuary would improve its survival chances even more.
It would not, however, prevent what happened to Flower Gardens in the summer of 2016, when a small section of the sanctuary experienced a 50 percent mortality rate of coral and species living near them. This topic also was touched on at Wednesday’s meeting.
Stil recovering
More than two years have passed and experts still are not sure what exactly caused the mass die-off. In fact, 40 experts gathered in February to hash out the potential causes and could not find one: all they could agree upon was that low oxygen levels were “the most likely contributing factor,” said Emma Hickerson, a sanctuary research coordinator.
“We can’t even say it was a cause, we can only say it contributed to the problem,” she said. One theory is that freshwater runoff from the 2016 Tax Day floods inundated the salty environment, sucking the oxygen from the water and suffocating the reef.
But experts said multiple things could be responsible.
Scientists still are conducting studies to learn more about the die-off, but Hickerson said it will be decades, if not centuries, before this portion of the reef returns to its previous luster.
“It’s really hard to wrap your arms around it,” she said.