Dying Coral

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This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

And I'm Robert Siegel.

Scientists exploring the Gulf of Mexico have discovered a patch of dead and dying coral. It is seven miles from the site of the blown-out瓦斯或油井噴出 BP oil well英國石油油井, and the scientists suspect the coral was harmed by the spill. NPR's Richard Harris has the story.

RICHARD HARRIS: Researchers set out on a government research vessel in October to continue a four-year-long study of corals in the Gulf of Mexico. Chuck Fischer from Penn State University was on the trip.

Mr. CHUCK FISCHER (Researcher, Penn State University): For most of this cruise, what we saw were healthy coral communities at depths from 500 to 2,500 meters, all over the Gulf of Mexico.

HARRIS: Or all under the Gulf of Mexico because at these great depths, we're not talking about reefs teeming with充滿了 colorful fish but corals that live in the dark, on the sea floor.海床上

Fischer says the scientists were feeling pretty good about what they saw up until they made their last dive, using a robotic minisub just seven miles from the site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Mr. FISCHER: From the moment the community came into sight, it was pretty clear that this didn't look like the other corals we'd been looking at for the past three weeks.

HARRIS: The sea-fan corals, normally bright gold or orange, were clearly in bad shape. Fischer says it was evident that many were dead or dying.

Mr. FISCHER: Corals that were in the process of losing tissue組織, that were covered with a scummy浮泡的, brown, flocculent material叢毛的物質, areas of recently dead skeleton.

HARRIS: Fischer says he and his colleagues took samples of the coral they will now analyze in order to see what caused the damage. But he strongly suspects that it has to do with the oil or maybe the chemical dispersants化學分散劑 from the disaster.

Mr. FISCHER: We've never come across a community of dying corals, and to find them at that place and at this time is very strong circumstantial evidence, I think, that it's related to the spill.

HARRIS: The good news here is that so far, at least, it seems to be an isolated case and not a sign of trouble throughout the Gulf.

Richard Harris, NPR News.