'Dead zones' prevalent off Myrtle Beach area coast

Sally Robinson sees it getting worse. More of the coral has lost color every time she dives the Freddy Day shipwreck.

"We've been seeing it for six years," said Robinson, of Charleston Scuba.

Coral whitening, or bleaching, occurs when the algae that feed the coral die. It's deadly not only to the coral but to swarms of young fish and marine life that depend on it - one of every four species in the ocean.

The shipwreck 18 miles out from Charleston is the farthest north that coral bleaching has been found, and it was unheard of here before Robinson came across it in 2005. Bleaching has already wiped out half or more of the living coral in the Florida keys.

If it were only the coral, that would be bad enough. But in a part of the Atlantic considered relatively healthy and rich in sea life, the coral is only the tip of it. The water is getting more fished, more dumped in, warmer and more acidic.

Along the heavily developed Grand Strand coast, hypoxic "dead zones" are showing up, spots where there's just not enough oxygen left in the water for fish to breathe.

Trophy fish and prize catches like bluefin tuna have gotten scarce.

The long, laden strings of fish catches are historic photos; the catch is now smaller in size and fewer. Jellyfish seem profuse.

Invasive tropical species like lionfish are moving in.

"I can remember when Charleston Harbor got to 82 degrees and we all gasped," Robinson said. "Last year it got to 89 degrees. Yesterday it was 86 degrees. There's a lot of things out there that leave people scratching their heads, anecdotal things."

Those things are only a few in a welter of trouble signs that perturbs biologists and seafarers alike. It's not just what's going wrong, it's that so much of it seems to be going wrong and getting worse.

It's an unspoken concern behind why researchers now conduct exhaustive forensic tests when something unexpected happens - the 32 bottlenose dolphins that washed up dead this spring, or the unprecedented number of stranded sea turtles admitted to the South Carolina Aquarium that have skin diseases. Human health could be at risk.

Worldwide, an alarm among researchers is getting louder: The ocean ecosystem itself is under strain and some scientists fear it might be pushed to collapse, killing off species in a mass extinction that hasn't been seen in tens of millions of years.

"Every indicator we have except one is proceeding faster than we thought, and they seem to be accelerating. We're watching the extinction of one of the most marvelous, incredible ecosystems in the history of the earth," said Phil Dustan, College of Charleston biologist. "The scientific community is really on edge about it. What's it going to take to wake people up?"

A public debate fumes over whether the climate is warming, whether it's a natural cycle or spurred on by man, and the level of danger in the increase of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It seems every new study adds fuel to the fire and new rebuttals flare up in attempts to discredit.

Well, an international research group just threw gasoline on the blaze.

In June, an international group of 27 marine science professionals assessed the current threats to the ocean ecosystem in terms of their cumulative impact - problems such as overfishing, coral bleaching, ocean warming, acidification and hypoxia worldwide. Their conclusion was stark.

"The combination of stressors on the ocean is creating the conditions associated with every previous major extinction of species in Earth's history," the International Programme on the State of the Ocean release read. "The speed and rate of degeneration of the ocean is far faster than anyone predicted ... the first steps to globally significant extinction may have begun."

The scientific director of the workshop, Alex Rogers, Oxford University conservation biology professor, put it bluntly - "if the ocean goes down, it's game over," he said.

Robert Currin Jr. is skeptical. Not about climate warming; he's become convinced that's happening. But the retired attorney, who lives on a creek on Edisto Island, echoes the sentiment of a lot of people in the Lowcountry and around the country. He's not convinced the evidence is solid that human activity is making, or can make, much difference.

"If it were that solid and that overwhelming nobody would take issue with it. But a lot of scientists take issue with it," he said. "I don't want to give up my air conditioning, give up my car, give up my boat if it's not going to make a difference. And it doesn't, from what I've read."

Dustan is fervent enough about the topic to have picked up a reputation among acquaintances as "a global warming guy." He gets impatient with that point of view.

"Someone said to me the other day, 'I don't believe in global warming.' I said, 'Do you believe in physics?' The one thing that's undeniable is that the pH in the ocean is dropping. The ocean is becoming more acidic and that's because of the carbon dioxide we're dropping in it from the burning of fossil fuels," he said.

And an acidic ocean is, literally, a dead sea.

The people in the tide-swept Lowcountry who make their lives on the sea are paying attention. Currin keeps up on the issues because he loves where he lives, he said. The sportsmen-founded South Carolina Wildlife Federation alerted its members to the IPSO findings.

"It's a concern," said Steve Moore, the federation's climate and energy director. "We're doing a lot more damage to the ocean than we thought we were doing. It's kind of scary when you talk about mass extinction."

Dustan says it won't be long before that concern becomes more common. As fish disappear, prices climb for a range of everyday goods like seafood. If sea rise continues, half the streets on the Charleston peninsula will be underwater at high tide by 2050, he said. Coastal insurance prices will soar.

"It's going to get real personal real fast," he said. "We need to help the ecosystem have resilience.

"We are intimately connected to our ocean here. It 's hard to say at times where the water ends and the marsh begins. Whatever we dump on the land or in the air ends up in the ocean, and that connectivity between the land and the ocean is something a lot of people don 't understand. We need to be more mindful of that."