But Chris Byrd, a former state environmental attorney, argues that coral shouldn't be collateral damage in a speculative gamble. The big ships could bypass Miami anyway, he says, because it's less profitable to unload freight at the peninsula's southern tip and haul it overland for hundreds of miles. Jacksonville will finish its deep channel later, but it's farther north, Byrd says—and it doesn't have coral reefs to destroy.
The reefs in South Florida run 358 miles (576 kilometers) along the coast, from south of Key West to north of Palm Beach. The Miami reefs are just outside Biscayne Bay. The dredge is slicing through seven acres of reefs as it deepens a shipping channel from the ocean to the port inside the bay. It will widen a quarter-mile stretch by 300 feet (91 meters). Another vessel sucks up sediment from the dredging, then loads it onto scows that carry it to a dumpsite five miles (eight kilometers) offshore.