The Flower Gardens – The Bigger Picture
[From Kelly Drinnin, NOAA Nationl Marine Sanctuary] If you’ve never been to the Flower Garden Banks sanctuary, you’ve probably never thought about what makes it the way it is. Two of the key elements are salt domes and currents.
Salt domes are small underwater mountains formed by large pockets of salt pushing the sea floor upward. These are the “banks” in the sanctuary name. Without these, the sea floor would be too deep to support reef-building corals out near the edge of the continental shelf.
The Gulf loop current is what brings wildlife up from the Caribbean, past Cuba and the Yucatan, into the Gulf of Mexico. Eddies that break away from that current, swirl westward across the gulf and carry with them many of the Caribbean fish and invertebrates found around our reefs. Other currents swirl clockwise from the Yucatan past Texas and Louisiana and are the likely source of our corals.
Of course, water temperature, freshwater input, artificial reef structures, etc. all play roles in how our reefs came to be and how they continue to develop.
The sanctuary is an amazing place that is the happy combination of all the right things, in the right places, at the right times! To learn more…
