"A layer of death and decay beneath the surface of the water."
That's how Will Wied describes what happened in picturesque Bocas del Toro on the Caribbean coast of Panama after a dramatic drop in oxygen levels.
Wied, a Ph.D. student in the FIU Institute of Environment, was part of a collaborative group of scientists led by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute that witnessed and documented the devastating deoxygenation event in 2017 and recently published their findings in Nature Communications. They found half the corals in in shallower areas didn't survive. But microbes that also live on the reef, including bacteria and viruses, responded differently, and could even provide a possible new clue for predicting future events.
"I've seen bleached reefs before, and this was so different. The sea urchins and the brittle stars were trying to climb up and escape. It was horrific, eye-opening and just sad to see," Wied said.
