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Dust in the wind: Fallout from Africa may be killing Coral Reefs an ocean away.

Article Excerpt
Coughing her way downriver on a slow boat to Timbuktu, Ginger Garrison is a little out of her element. As Bozo tribesmen pull catfish from the Niger River and boatmen pole their dugout canoes through the midday gloom, the strong winter wind known as the harmattan lifts clouds of fine red dust into the air, and into the eyes and lungs of people throughout the dry North African region known as the Sahel.

The only breathing difficulty Garrison, a marine ecologist, usually has to worry about is emptying her scuba tank too fast in the gin-clear, bathtub-warm waters of Virgin Islands National Park in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Garrison, a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) researcher whose work has focused for nearly 20 years on Caribbean coral reefs, has come here to Mali seeking a source of one of the most widespread ecological collapses ever documented.

An ocean away from the Sahel, coral reef ecosystems around the Caribbean are dying, and scientists are beginning to think that dust from Africa is playing a major role in their collapse. Overfishing, sedimentation, and direct damage from boats and divers, among other threats, have combined with pathogens, climate changes, and hurricanes to severely degrade reefs around the region. Diseases and bleaching have decimated once-dominant species like staghorn and elkhorn corals, longspine sea urchins, and sea fans. Few species or sites have recovered, and carpets of algae--flourishing in the aftermath of overfishing and die-offs of sea urchins and other algae-eaters--now dominate many Caribbean reefs.

Yet researchers...