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Reflections on Carysfort Reef
By Jerry Greenberg
Jerry Greenberg put Key Largo, Fla., on the
underwater map with his January 1962
National Geographic cover story, “Key Largo
Reef: America’s First Undersea Park.” To
understand the significance of the work the
Coral Restoration Foundation is doing today,
it helps to know the recent history of these
reefs, a subject Greenberg knows well. At age
87, he is actively diving these reefs today.
I started diving Key Largo in 1949.
Back then I was spearfishing with friends
from Miami, coming down to the Keys to shoot grouper and snapper to sell to local
restaurants. All I knew was Molasses Reef at that time because that’s about as far
as we could go from Mandalay Marina in our little skiff with its tiny outboard motor.
It wasn’t long before I became interested in photography, and I saw in a Leica
publication an article by Peter Stackpole about his underwater photography. I had the
same Leica camera and a 28mm lens, and I paid $150 — which was huge money at
the time — for a housing to take it underwater.
Most of my early underwater photography was done at the south end of Key Largo,
where I photographed walls of porkfish. I still remember when I shot my iconic photo
of Carl Gage swimming through the school of spadefish on June 1, 1960. I spent two
and a half months on the National Geographic assignments working around Molasses
Reef, but something was still visually missing from the piece. I needed a sweeping
overview of what a coral reef was.
I remembered Carysfort Reef at the north end of Key Largo, which was too far to
run my little boat. The good people at the Ocean Reef Club provided me a place to
work, which made the trip to the reef much shorter. From there I rediscovered the
beauty of South Carysfort, and what a wonder it was.
There were vast fields of elkhorn and staghorn coral, big boulder corals and lots
of fish. I shot some of my early Anscochrome slides there and also did panorama
work with my Rolleimarin cameras with the 2 ¼-inch by 2 ¼-inch images I stitched
together manually. One of these composites ran across the bottom of two pages in
the National Geographic article. There was Acropora palmata (elkhorn coral) as far as
the eye could see, which was quite far indeed that day.
Most of those corals are gone today, victims of storms, water-quality issues and
the die-off of the black long-spined sea urchins. But pockets of new coral are coming
back, and the work Ken Nedimyer is doing with the CRF to plant coral is astonishing.
Will we ever have those vast fields of branching corals again? Probably not in the
lifetimes of those reading these words, but progress is being made.
national government agencies and the scientific community. Creating a local
nonprofit composed of the stakeholders is the next step, which then leads to
planning, permit applications and a host of other logistical details. Echevarria
believes this systems approach to restoration will foster optimism and hope in
communities and instill stakeholders with a sense of ownership.
The ultimate goal is for CRF to become a clearinghouse for coral science,
ecotourism, grant applications for restoration groups and fundraising for
nurseries. It is an ambitious project, tailored to individual communities
according to stakeholder needs. And it all started with one little polyp landing
on Nedimyer’s live rock farm about a decade ago.
The events I photographed for CRF changed my outlook forever, and if
you have occasion to participate in a coral planting trip, it will change yours,
too. Come to the Florida Keys — or very soon, to some other places around
the Caribbean — and experience it for yourself. To join the effort, either as a
participant or a stakeholder, visit
800-451-3737
silver
cinema of dreams
STEPHEN FRINK
