Contact: Patricia Viets				FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 9, 1997

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has available a video that identifies abnormally high sea surface temperatures (SSTs) that might lead to potential coral reef bleaching.

Any region that is colored yellow implies that SSTs in that location exceed the "comfortable level" for corals to the degree that they may begin to bleach (algae [plant] leaves the coral [animal] taking its color pigments away and leaving the coral as white in color). This effort is
part of NOAA's Coral Reef Initiative. This product serves to facilitate an improved network with the coral community whenever unusually high SSTs move into a reef area. At present the coral reefs listed below have experienced bleaching during the past few months:

1] Florida Keys - August
2] Baja California [Mexico] - Jul/Aug
3] Yucatan [NE tip - Mexico] - Aug

If tropical storm activity continues to be minimal over the western Caribbean, conditions appear favorable for another round of bleaching progressing southward through that region during the next two months.

Visit NOAA's Coral Reef Beaching hot spot chart on the World Wide Web at:
http://psbsgi1.nesdis.noaa.gov:8080/PSB/EPS/SST/climohot.html