Source: AFP
February 15, 2010

Miami, FL - The polar snap enveloping much of the United States in record cold has been killing off coral reefs in the normally balmy warm waters off the Florida Keys, experts said Monday.

The unusually chilly weather so far this year has seen sea temperatures plummet in southern Florida -- a fatal development for the coral, which dies when exposed for an extended time to temperatures below 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit).

Especially in the lower Keys, "temperatures have been lower... there is higher mortality," Diego Lirman, a University of Miami expert on coral, told AFP.

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