FAU Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute's video: Brian Lapointe 1 29 20 Chasing Nutrients and Coral Reef Decline at Looe Key

Full title: Chasing Nutrients and Coral Reef Decline at Looe Key, Florida Keys: A Four Decade Quest About the Speaker Dr. Brian Lapointe, Research Professor at FAU Harbor Branch, has spent his career studying nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus), algal growth, and eutrophication. His early experiences diving on South Florida's coral reefs inspired him to pursue a career in marine science, which led him to Boston University where he received his B.A. degree in Biology. He earned his M.S. in Environmental Sciences from the University of Florida and his Ph.D. from the University of South Florida. Dr. Lapointe's work in the Florida Keys since 1983 was based out of his laboratory on Big Pine Key and focused on monitoring nutrients at Looe Key as well as the pelagic Sargassum, the floating brown seaweed for which the Sargasso Sea was named. He has conducted research on coral reefs throughout the wider Caribbean region, as well as the Great Barrier Reef (Australia), Hawaii, Palau, Philippines, Fiji, and the Marianas Islands in the Pacific Ocean. An emphasis of Dr. Lapointe's work has been the role of land-based nutrient pollution in supporting harmful algal blooms and degrading coral reef and seagrass ecosystems. He is currently supported by the Florida Chamber of Commerce to help educate the public, business community, and policymakers regarding the need for improved wastewater and stormwater infrastructure to mitigate harmful algal blooms and help secure Florida’s water future.  About the Lecture Water quality and living coral cover have declined dramatically in the Florida Keys over the past four decades. Dr. Brian Lapointe recently published a three-decade study in the international journal Marine Biology. While many scientists attribute coral bleaching and ultimately die-off to increasing sea-surface temperatures associated with climate change, Dr. Lapointe’s findings show otherwise for Looe Key.The lecture will describe how increasing nutrient pollution from septic tanks in the Florida Keys, combined with new policies to “send water south” from Lake Okeechobee, have increased nitrogen concentrations and phytoplankton biomass at Looe Key. The increasing nutrient inputs also increased the N:P (nitrogen:phosphorus) ratio in reef macroalgae, a condition known to cause metabolic stress in corals that makes them more susceptible to coral diseases and bleaching. These findings suggest that local and regional actions to moderate anthropogenic nitrogen loading can increase the resilience of coral reefs under the current level of temperature stress.