African Dust
Abstract
Pollution from sewage, run-off from land, dredging of the ocean bottom, and UV radiation has all been factors accused of killing the Florida and Caribbean corals, but these factors do not apply for the many affected reefs where human population is low. Could it be the millions of tons of African desert dust riding the trade winds and being deposited from Africa onto the Atlantic Ocean and all the way to southeastern United States? Researchers from the United States Geological Survey have been monitoring coral reefs for forty years and discovering that the dust carries harmful microbes and elements that are not only fatal to the reefs, but also harmful to humans. The researchers are also finding that large dust events seem to correlate with benchmark Caribbean coral reef benchmark diseases.
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Microbial growth on a sample filter collected during an African dust event in the US Virgin Islands, after 96 hours of incubation. Sample collected from Deck Point, St Thomas, US Virgin Islands on 8 August 2001 at 11:45 am
http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/african_dust/pdf.html
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