Noaas Coral Health And Monitoring Program

This site contains a wealth of information on Coral Reefs including: literature, disease information, researcher's directory, bulletins, protocols, real-time data, discussions, pictures, quotes, and an extensive links listing.

The CLEO, Coral Literature Education and Outreach project, is designed to provide easy access to gray literature and pre-1990s literature on the coral reef environments near the ICON/CREWS monitoring stations. The website provides access to six bibliographies of gray literature on coral reefs in Florida, Bahamas, U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica. The bibliographies include unpublished local environmental studies, technical reports, and other locally circulated papers (Some entries provide access to PDF documents).

Features information on coral reefs, provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Discusses the NOAA's coral reef initiative, the Coral Health and Monitoring Program, and the Great American Fish Count. Includes photographs of coral reefs and news releases.

Explores emerging monitoring strategies and presents adaptive management techniques to anticipate and mitigate coral bleaching, with emphasis upon identification and promotion of resilience in coral reef ecosystems. Includes coverage of strategic use of marine protected areas.

"This technical memorandum presents the findings from the initial Hawaiʻi NCRMP socioeconomic data collection. The report presents preliminary social indicators and provides examples of how composite indicators can be used to analyze changes over time in a long term setting. The main objective is to lay the groundwork for combining and comparing socioeconomic variables with a goal of developing meaningful composite indicators that can be used to examine trends in human dimensions of coral reef resources and better understand human influences on effective coral reef conservation. It should be noted that this report presents information that, in many instances, is being collected for the first time. In all instances, the information represents baseline socioeconomic data for the NCRMP. Some of the variables presented in this report identify gaps in information, and we provide suggestions on how these gaps can be addressed in the future"--Purpose of this Report (page 2). [doi:10.7289/V5/TM-CRCP-30 (https://doi.org/10.7289/V5/TM-CRCP-30)]

"In 2005 the Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources (DMWR) initiated a comprehensive long-term monitoring program for the reefs in American Samoa, the American Samoa Coral Reef Monitoring Program (ASCRMP). Funding was provided through the Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Ocean Services (NOS). Although there have been previous monitoring surveys in American Samoa covering a variety of spatial and temporal scales, the ASCRMP represents the first attempt to annually monitor representative reefs in American Samoa, starting initially around Tutuila and eventually in the Manua islands and the two atolls, Rose and Swains. The program has been set up with long-term government funding, and is therefore capable of accumulating long-term data sets annually over a larger geographic scale. The primary objectives of the American Samoa Coral Reef Monitoring Program are to: (1) Monitor the status and trends in the distribution and abundance of reef biota on reefs in American Samoa, and (2) Provide environmental managers, as well as other decision makers, with information that is pertinent to managing coral reefs in the territory. As a monitoring program, ASCRMP's goal is to document change - i.e. where, how much, and what kind of changes take place at the various monitoring sites. The ideal is to resolve change at scales which will allow judgments to be made as to which changes are within normal, natural variability, and which are outside it. The project is coordinated by two staff members that are funded by the program; during FY2011 and FY2012 the Coral Reef Monitoring Benthic Ecologist position was filled by Dr. Doug Fenner and the Coral Reef Monitoring Fish Ecologist position was filled by Ben Carroll. During the last quarter of FY2012. Mr. Benjamin Carroll’s contract was not renewed by the then director Ufagafa Ray Tulafono. The DMWR’s Chief Fisheries Biologist filled in Mr. Carroll's duties, where possible up until the end of January 2013 when the position was filled part time by DMWR fisheries supervisor Alice Lawrence and part-time by DMWR fisheries technician Saolotoga Tofaeono. The position was filled full-time by Alice Lawrence from the end of January 2014 until the present time. The program utilizes the DMWR Boston Whaler vessel to access survey sites around Tutuila, however the boat was out of action between January 2012 and October 2012 and between January 2013 and October 2013, and again between January 2014 and November 2014. There were attempts to utilize local fishing boats to conduct surveys with varying success, due to problems with late payments, safety issues and logistics related to the smaller and slower engines used by the local fishing boats"--Project Background.

NOAA Technical Memorandum CRCP 11. Identifies goals, objectives, and approaches to guide NOAA's research, management, and international cooperation activities on deep-sea coral and sponge ecosystems for fiscal years 2010 through 2019. Integrates research and conservation needs and is intended to be a flexible, evolving document that allows NOAA and its partners to address new management challenges and priorities as appropriate. The primary goal of this Strategic Plan is to improve the understanding, conservation, and management of deep-sea coral and sponge ecosystems.