COASTAL SHORES. These sandy shores, north of Miami at Dania Beach, are being washed away by a normal high tide on a clear day in April 2001, casting doubt on the future of the apartments and homes that crowd the east coast. Rising sea level is also driving sea water into the Everglades, inundating mangroves and threatening all low lying islands. Thus Florida and the Keys create in the US an echo of the plight of the many Indo-Pacific island nations who face rising seas.

MANGROVES. Florida especially is endangered by rising seas because much of the coast has been cleared and built over. Huge costs will mount as both stronger hurricanes and flooding cause damage.

MANGROVES. Florida especially is endangered by rising seas because much of the coast has been cleared and built over. Huge costs will mount as both stronger hurricanes and flooding cause damage.

HIDDEN FORESTS. Stronger waves and higher ocean levels are significantly changing beaches. At Neskowin, Oregon, a "Ghost Forest" of hemlocks and spruce appeared when sand was carried away. Geologists think that one or two thousand years ago these trees were victims of a strong earthquake that subsided coastal lowlands. Only now, with increased coastal erosion, are these stumps appearing..

HIDE TIDES. Eroding sands impact buildings and sewer pipes during normal high tides on Vero Beach in Florida.

COASTAL DEVELOPMENT Heavy development on the coastal shores of South Florida is in grave danger from rising sea levels and stronger ocean storms.

MISSING SPECIES. This nudibranch Hopkinsia rosea, discovered at and named for the Hopkins Lab, was numerous in the 1930s survey but not seen at all 60 years later. Favoring cooler water, it is still found in other locations near Monterey.

SUMMER SEAS. Marine Biologist Rafe Sagarin points out some of the tide pool habitat that he found had changed when he re-inventoried a 60-year-old study at Hopkins Marine Laboratory, Monterey, California. Summer sea temperature has risen more than one degree in that time, and the re-survey showed many warm water tide pool animals had increased while those favoring colder water had decreased.

FLOODING. The world average sea level has increased by up to six inches in the 20th century, according to some estimates. Climatologists and oceanographers attribute this to expansion of seawater as it warms, with additional increases from glacial melting. This increase is unevenly distributed as shown by tide gauge records, but the rise is increasingly a factor in coastal erosion, flooding, and change in estuaries. Towns in coastal lowlands -- such as Nehalem, Oregon -- may experience more frequent inundation, especially where coastal mountain rainfall is also increasing as climate changes.

CORAL REEFS. Australian coral reef scientist Dr. Cardon Wallace and an assistant take small samples of coral near Bali, Indonesia. This area has suffered from both climate-induced die back, as well as human caused damage from "bomb fishing." Dr. Wallace is monitoring this and many other sites in this period between episodes of coral bleaching. In 1998 a severe El Nino raised ocean temperatures throughout the world, which, coupled with already-rising ocean temperature from global warming, caused many coral reefs to be damaged. Bleaching occurs when microscopic plants, zooxanthellae, inhabiting corals are expelled because ocean waters become too warm. The zooxanthellae both color and help feed the coral organisms in a symbiotic relationship, and if the bleaching episode lasts too long, the coral die.

Most coral bleaching can be explained by a one degree Celsius rise in water temperature above the normal summer maximum temperature.

LEARN MORE ABOUT CORAL REEFS ON OUR EXPEDITION TO PALMYRA ATOLL

SEABIRDS. High tide on Delaware Bay presses migrating shorebirds against storm sewer outfalls near Cape May. Sandpipers, red knots, and turnstones migrate to the Arctic in numbers approaching one million; this population already faces declines in horseshoe crab eggs, their principal food along these shores. Rising sea level now is reducing the area for foraging and could affect the success of this annual flight of thousands of miles from South America to the Arctic.