that, not only identifies the problem of the destruction and what that destruction means to many people in many instances are different things. If you are a fisherman, you don't care if the coral grows as long as the fish are there. But you know, if the coral is gone, there won't be any fish there. You can go through the other benefits and you have got different interested beneficiaries, so to speak. What I am trying to determine is how we can formulate anything in this legislation to bring about that information base that not only identifies the problem which I think we are pretty good at, especially when it is being destroyed or as was stated earlier, that there is no young growing, there is no movement. Then we back up from that and, once we identify that, we have to identify cost-effective ways to cure it, whether it is siltation-we probably won't do much, as you mentioned, because of the problem of global warming. I understand that there is a hesitancy to go to the Rio convention because we may have to do something about gasoline, automobile emissions. But where can we get the information base? Remember, you were talking about 435 guys in the House and 100 in the Senate and they have no, quote, expertise or background. There are very few scientists in the House, or Senate, or in the administration, at least, on the elected level. And how do you convince them to put resources in it? What I am trying to assert here is that we have had to have a cost/benefit for this investment and we have to see a return on the investment. It is difficult, as many other new, quote, solutions to problems are, to bring that forward. But I think that is where we have to go. Once we identify that problem, we have to identify the source and then eliminate the source and usually that costs somebody hard dollars. You might be talking about a farmer, it may be as simple as changing the kind of fertilizer. If you are talking about sewage treatment, siltation, so on, then after you find that one source of the problem, in many of these, as in the Clean Water Act, you can identify 32 different chemicals in a body of water that in and by themselves have no effect, but if combination starts to be ingested by the plankton and the minerals and the bass and the walleye and salmon that people are eating. Maybe this isn't at that stage on your reef yet, but I am sure if we don't do anything about the source, and we keep studying and identifying heavier and heavier impacts, you know, some day we have to start to eliminate the source. That brings into that the cost/benefit ratio and some hard decisions, different land use, limited land use, limited contributions into the system. It could occur in another area 30, 40, 50 miles away, I am sure, from this reef. Maybe all the way up and down the whole coastal region. You will have an effect down here from that. If that kind of information could be gathered and we could start to prioritize and pinpoint those results, we can at least get the amount of revenue that is going to take care of some of those problems or at least start to lessen the impacts in some of those areas. Just as an interested party in this reef protection business, how do we do that? Can you help us? How can you and the scientific community help us to sell that program, and that result, and that cost if it is going to be a heavy cost to not only the Federal Government, but even perhaps a larger stake is going to be held by the state of Florida and even a larger stake the Keys, in general, and even a larger share than that is the people who are making their living on this resource. Dr. AXELRAD. To sell this issue to Congress, the point has to be made that 2.5 million people visit the Keys each year; the reef is a big part of the reason they come here. I don't have the dollar figures on that. I don't think NOAA has an economist assigned to do it, but those things could be costed. We have the economic value, not just the visitation value but the fisheries products, the potential pharmaceuticals in the future, many other economic values. We have the amenity value, the beauty, the fact that it is our national heritage. Mr. NOWAK. That it may be unique and, once it is destroyed, you lose it. Dr. AXELRAD. You want to look your grandchildren in the eye and say we had it but you won't have it. I hope that argument is used at times with your colleagues in Congress. We can establish a value. What do we do with it? You talked about coral bleaching. That is an issue and an issue that has to be dealt with. There is, however, a quote I would like to read you from the Workshop on Coral Bleaching held in Miami last year. It is pretty good information, very recent information. The workshop found that although global climate change represents an important long-term challenge, the most immediate concerns stem from local and regional anthropogenic sources, the result of human population growth, land use, resource exploitation, waste disposal, et cetera. I made a point in my talk that we can take some action now. We can stop fishing totally in some areas of this reef and we can see what happens. You have heard from a couple speakers, you heard from Deborah Santavy that if you remove some organisms it has an effect on the whole reef. You heard the quote from John Muir, ecosystems, everything is connected. Why don't we try this experiment? Why don't we see what happens? We have heard a lot about nutrients. I can tell you it is not that difficult a matter to design a nutrient study that can be conducted in a year for under $1 million that will answer that question. Right now, we have very dedicated researchers some in this room, taking off chunks of this problem and dealing with it quite well. But if we continue with the pace we have been going, it is going to be a long time and, as you heard from Dr. Porter, we may not have a long time. I would like us to take some action where we are fairly certain we know that we can have a positive effect on the reef, take that now. I would like us to do some short-term research in intensive manner and give some of the people in this room some money to do some things along the lines they are doing them now to get answers quickly. I think that is important. Mr. NOWAK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. SCHEUER. I would like to ask one last question for the whole panel if any of you are interested in answering. What is the single-most serious problem now threatening the health of the Caribbean and the Florida coral reefs? What measures could we take, collectively, to overcome such a threat or threats? Dr. CARR. Somebody said "people" in the back of the room. Florida is an extraordinary area. We have a level of development here which is hard to replicate elsewhere, maybe Jamaica, Kingston Harbor, but Florida is what is the destiny for the rest of the Caribbean basin that is tragic and it is something we ought to reduce. So we I think it is appropriate that Florida at least has the U.S. Congress to help out. I do hope Congress can help the other parts of the Caribbean basin. Elsewhere-when I think of the country of Belize with a fabulous reef, and it kind of reflects the discussion this afternoon, there are these scales of problems. There are contaminants coming in from the ocean basin scale, among them solid wastes, all kinds with plastics and junk washing up on pristine beaches, oil pollution, tars and so on, so these reefs are affected by the community of nations in all our collective junk, as well as the problems with site-specific problems. Research has to be scaled, and conservation, our actions that you ask for, have to be done at the appropriate scale. It is a variety of activities. It seems to me one thing we could possibly do here in Florida is project more and more what we have learned about coastal zone management. We have done everything wrong, we have done a lot right. We went through a whole coastal zone management program that we didn't implement but we found out a lot about "coastal setback," about how a community can live next to the ocean. We can project that to the Caribbean nations and do it now and forcefully and persuasively before all of them have made the same mistakes we have, that would be a useful thing for the U.S. Government to facilitate and it is not necessarily terribly costly. But I go down as a Floridian to Belize and say I know how bad it can get, you have a pristine virgin reef here, take action now. Make the decisions now, believe the development is something. Mr. SCHEUER. What do you advise them to do to enhance the integrity of their coral reefs? Dr. CARR. We are the coastal zone management plan with funding from the global environmental facility. It will be detailed. We have resource maps of where everything is, the ecologic dynamics of the area and there will be guidelines, zoning as well as parks and protected areas and a management authority. We are going to borrow from the Australians again and see if Belize can do one of these inner ministerial agencies that cuts across ministries and becomes the czar of the reef. We can see if the government can take that step. It will be a great Democratic challenge, but we are doing things at all those levels. Mr. SCHEUER. Yes. Dr. FUJITA. I wonder if I can respond to your question, a very sweeping question. In my view, the most important factors affecting coral reef degradation over the whole world are sewage inputs clearly, siltation from poor land use, this bleaching phenomenon, and overexploitation of resources at unsustainable levels. My specialty is on nutrients, so I propose a solution to that. Particularly here in the Keys where there is a consensus that near-shore degradation is occurring principally because of high nutrient levels, we know what the sources are. There are 20,000-some septic tanks leaching nutrients into this permeable substrate that Gene Schin described, clearly those nutrients make their way into the system. We need to cap emissions at current levels right now until standards are developed. These septic tanks are not regulated with any nutrient standards whatsoever. In addition, we need to take action to reduce current loadings. Unfortunately, although we have very good laws here, including designation of waters as Outstanding Florida Waters which have provisions to prevent degradation, unfortunately that law does not apply to sources that were present prior to 1985. We have to get regulators to deal with illegal cesspits, of which we have something like 5,000, and with the Key West sewage outfall. In other parts of the world-I want to emphasize that nutrient control does not have to be extremely costly. We have spent $50 billion to construct sewage treatment plants in the United States. To treat nutrients using denitrification and so on might be costly. In other areas of the world, though, it is possible to implement other technologies that are cheaper, like getting away from flush toilets, using composting toilets that don't produce septic water, or trying algal ponds. There is a pilot study here in the Keys to see if biological processes can treat human waste to eliminate nutrient discharge into the water. There are cost-effective solutions out there. We just need to implement them. Mr. SCHEUER. Well, this has been also a very fascinating panel and we thank you very much. We thank you for your patience. We have been at it for 3-and-a-half hours now and, from our point of view, it was well worth it. Thank you very, very much. The hearing is adjourned subject to the call of the Chair. [Whereupon, at 4:30 p.m., the subcommittees were adjourned, subject to the call of the Chair.] APPENDIX University of New England HILLS BEACH ROAD, BIDDEFORD, MAINE 04005-9599 [207] 283-0171 May 1, 1992 Rosemarie Gnam Subcommittee on Environment Dear Rosemarie Gnam: I am writing in support of the House of Representatives' Bill # 4537 entitled the "Coral Reef Environmental Research Act". I recently spoke with our mutual friend Chuck Carr regarding his testimony at the recent hearings in Key West. Chuck suggested that I might expand briefly upon his remarks regarding the long-standing conservation objectives of Wildlife Conservation International as they relate to the magnificent barrier reef ecosystem of Belize. My scientific training lies primarily in the field of coral reef fish ecology. I have been conducting research on the conservation and biology of both coral reef and freshwater fishes in Belize for over a decade. Under the auspices of WCI of the New York Zoological Society I am working closely with scientific colleagues at home and abroad, fisheries personnel from the government of Belize, and coral reef park planners such as Ms. Janet Gibson, to implement a long-term and far reaching conservation strategy for the Belize coral reef ecosystem. As Chuck described in his written testimony, WCI has purchased Middle Cay, one of 6 tiny islands on Glovers' Reef Atoll, and committed it to conservation. We hope that future educational and research activities on Middle Cay will serve as catalyst and seed crystal for a new order of research directed towards conservation and sustainable management of these precious resources. Hence, Chuck's invitation to gather those who will implement this remarkable legislation for an interlude of careful thought and discussion on that precious island. Our hope for a new order of marine conservation research lies with our proposal for long-term ecological research on Glovers' Reef Atoll. We propose nothing less than a longterm, large-scale experimental ecological study in which a socially managed fishery harvest is the major experimental variable. The time has come to apply the vast body of modern ecological theory and knowledge to problems related to maintaining the integrity of our coral reef ecosystems world-wide. We believe that management models that employ the single-species population based maximum sustainable yield approach to fisheries and coral reef management are fatally flawed. Such a strategy ignores the interdependence of nature, its expensive to implement, it over-regulates people's lives, and it discourages the |