Noaas Coral Reef Program

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.

"This user's guide was developed as a reference to be used with the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program MPA Checklist to provide further clarification on the fourteen assessment areas addressed in the checklist, and to assist assessment participants in the selection of a specific tier for each assessment area. The guide includes instructions on how to conduct assessment interviews and how to complete the checklist document. The user's guide also provides a detailed description of the intention behind each of the 14 assessment areas to help the interviewer clearly explain the significance of and differentiate between each tier in an individual assessment area. This helps to ensure that the correct tier is selected so that management capacity can be accurately assessed and all gaps and needs can be appropriately identified. Many of the assessment area descriptions also include a section entitled 'helpful resources' that refers to additional information related to that assessment area that is either made available in the appendix to the user's guide or as a web link"--Purpose.

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.

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.