Sediments a likely culprit in spread of deadly disease on Florida coral reefs, study finds
"A new study found that seafloor sediments have the potential to transmit a deadly pathogen to local corals and hypothesizes that sediments have played a role in the persistence of a devastating coral disease outbreak throughout Florida and the Caribbean.""Our findings indicate that disease-associated microbes may reside in sediments, which can help explain how this disease outbreak has been able to spread and persist largely unabated for the last seven years," said the study's lead author Michael Studivan, an assistant scientist with UM's Cooperative Institute of Marine and Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS) based at NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Lab (AOML).
To study the spread of the disease, the scientists built a disease transmission apparatus in the CIMAS Experimental Reef Lab to test and identify possible disease vectors and sources. They inoculated reef sediments with SCTLD from diseased corals and exposed these sediments to healthy corals. For four weeks, they monitored the corals daily for signs of the disease's characteristic white lesions to determine how many individuals were infected, and how quickly the disease progressed."
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