Locally, there was a lot of damage to soft life on the reefs.
Gorgonians, rope sponge, even elephant ears were torn away and piled in
windrows along the inside of the reef, mixed with palm fronds, pieces of
house trailers, excavated plastic, beer cans, and golf balls. Sand has
filled in a lot of low places, undercuts, and fingers. Millions of Meoma
ventricosa have been killed, so many that the other life isn't even
bothering to eat them.

So far, the hard coral not buried, the fish, turkles, nurse sharks,
bugs, and mollusca seem to be fine, but the intermediate effects of this
dramatic change in mix of species is yet to be seen.

Over the past 15,000 years, since global warming started building these
reefs, they have survived many hurricanes. This is prolly the first in
which they will have to revive under the stress of pollution, however.

The wheel house was blown off the Tony along with all the many
echinoderms and tunicates that made this wreck really interesting. The
Horseshoe is filled in and the reef there looks like it was sandblasted.

m