A Scientific Forum on the Gulf of Mexico: the Islands in the Stream Concept
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Proceedings: Gulf of Mexico Science Forum A Scientific Forum on the Gulf of Mexico: The Islands in the Stream Concept Proceedings of the Forum: 23 January 2008 Keating Education Center Mote Marine Laboratory Sarasota, Florida Proceedings: Gulf of Mexico Science Forum Table of Contents Forward (Ernest Estevez) .............................................................................................................4 Executive Summary.....................................................................................................................6 Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................9 Organizing Committee ................................................................................................................9 Welcome and Introduction (Kumar Mahadevan and Daniel J. Basta) .....................................10 Introduction to the Forum (Billy D. Causey)...........................................................................12 Summary of Scientific Forum (John Ogden) ...........................................................................14 Panel 1: The Geological Setting...............................................................................................17 Geologic Underpinnings of the “Islands in the Stream”; West Florida Margin (Albert Hine and Stanley Locker)...............................................17 Shelf Edge of the Northwest Gulf of Mexico (Niall Slowey).............................................22 Panel 1 Discussion................................................................................................................28 Panel 2: The Oceanographic Setting.......................................................................................30 Physical Oceanography in the Gulf of Mexico: Connectivity of Coastal Ecosystems and Large Scale Flows (Villy Kourafalou et al.)...........................................................30 Coastal Ocean Circulation, Observing and Modeling Systems for the West Florida Shelf (Robert Weisberg) ....................................................................................33 Panel 2 Discussion................................................................................................................35 Panel 3: Benthic Characterizations.........................................................................................37 Gulf of Mexico Initiative, Northwest Gulf of Mexico (Emma Hickerson and GP Schmahl) ...............................................................................37 Long Term Monitoring at the Flower Garden Banks: Status, Stasis, and Change (William Precht et al.)........................................................41 Pulley Ridge (Walter Jaap and Robert Halley).....................................................................45 Panel 3 Discussion................................................................................................................47 Panel 4: Fish and Fisheries Characterization/Spawning Aggregations...............................49 Fish and Fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico (Jerald Ault)......................................................49 Ecological Studies in the shelf-edge reserves Madison Swanson and Steamboat Lumps of the northeast Gulf of Mexico: A Summary of Research Studies (Chris Koenig and Felicia Coleman) .................................................52 The Timing and Location of Reef Fish Spawning Aggregations in Belize and the Cayman Islands: Insights for the Design of a Protected Areas Network in the Gulf of Mexico (Will Heyman)............................................................................56 Panel 4 Discussion................................................................................................................61 2 Proceedings: Gulf of Mexico Science Forum Panel 5: Existing Legal Structure/Regulations in the Gulf of Mexico .................................63 HAPC and Other Habitat or Area Based Regulations in the Gulf of Mexico (Shepherd Grimes)..............................................................................................63 Minerals Management Service: Protection of Sensitive Habitats on the Outer Continental Shelf of the Gulf of Mexico (James Sinclar).............................................64 Panel 5 Discussion................................................................................................................69 Panel 6: Connections with Mexico and the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System...............70 Connectivity of the South Florida Coral Reef Ecosystem to Upstream Waters of the Western Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico (Elizabeth Johns and John Lamkin).................................................................................70 The Mexican Component of the Islands in the Stream Concept (John Wes Tunnell).........................................................................................................74 The Ocean Tracking Network and the Gulf of Mexico (Bob Hueter)..............................78 Panel 6 Discussion................................................................................................................82 Open Discussion (Frank Alcock) ...............................................................................................84 Attendee List...............................................................................................................................90 Appendix A: HAPC and Other Habitat or Area Based Regulations in the Gulf of Mexico (Shepherd Grimes)....................................................................................................92 3 Proceedings: Gulf of Mexico Science Forum Forward “If the sea floor was writ in Braille the bumps on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico would spell, ‘Gardens of Eden.’” E.D. Estevez Near the end of the last ice age, sea level was considerably lower because so much of Earth’s fresh water was locked in mile-thick glaciers. The shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico was on average about 100 miles seaward of its present location; the Yucatan and Florida peninsulas were twice their present size, and Florida’s coastal landscape was as arid as Mexico’s is today. At sea level’s lowest stand, the surface area and volume of the Gulf were substantially smaller than today, but due to the irregular bathymetry of the shelf, the ancient shoreline was approximately as long as our modern one. Early humans would eventually explore the Gulf shore as northern glaciers melted and sea level continued to rise. They used the changing shoreline as a corridor for exploration, gathering resources, and settling. The Gulf shoreline’s earliest value to humans was the role it played as a connector of people to people, and people to resources. As sea level rose, the transitions of shorelines and shallow waters to those we now see were continuous but not uniform. Rising and falling in fits and starts, the sea drowned coastal lowlands and deepened the waters over an expanding shelf zone. During this dynamic time, some short-lived barrier islands formed only to be destroyed; other, hardier islands were simply submerged. Continental rock formations near the surface of low uplands were first exposed, and then sculpted into submarine buttes and mesas by terrific tidal currents that ripped coastal land and seascapes. Shallow seafloors welled up into sun-bathed shallows as enormous geological pressure uplifted deeply buried salt deposits. And, as the waters of the Gulf warmed, yet other unusual oases of diverse and abundant marine life arose from the seabed as coral reefs. Today, these buttes and mesas and coral reefs make up dozens of seafloor habitat islands encircling the Gulf from the Campeche Banks to the Florida Keys. They lay an average of 70 miles from today’s shoreline in depths averaging 200 to 300 feet — much like a bathtub ring left by former sea levels. Each feature is relatively small, ranging in size from one-fifth of a square mile to 460 square miles. The average size of the habitat islands is probably on the order of twenty square miles, with their combined area about one-third smaller than that of Mississippi Sound, and less than one-fifth of one percent of the Gulf of Mexico’s area. While small, these habitat islands show astonishing biological productivity, owing to the structure each provides, to summits at or above the penetration of useful sunlight, and to proximity to land and continental nutrient supplies. But two attributes are even more important for the islands’ evolutionary and ecological distinction — their connection through the ages, and their stepping-stone locations in the Gulf of Mexico’s major patterns of ocean circulation. For thousands of years until now, they have all endured together as refugia, feeding and breeding grounds, and epicenters of productivity. They have been connected in time. Their locations are of paramount significance for their roles as reservoirs, springboards, corridors, and destinations of marine life, including the Caribbean plants and animals swept into the Gulf through the Yucatan Strait. In U.S. waters, the habitat islands occur as elongated 4 Proceedings: Gulf of Mexico Science Forum constellations within the western, northern, and eastern Gulf with names such as the South Texas Banks, the Pinnacles, and Pulley Ridge. Individual rises are very close together, on average only 5 to 15 miles apart, with constellations farther apart, on the order of 100 to 150 miles. While 150 miles seems