Lance Smith

2016

Purpose/need: On October 2009, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) received a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) to list 83 species of coral as either threatened or endangered under the U.S.Endangered Species Act (ESA). After evaluating whether the petition was warranted for all species, and assessing the biological status and evaluating the risk of extinction for each, on October 10, 2014 the NMFS determined to list 20 of the 83 petitioned coral species; including 15 Indo-Pacific and 5 Caribbean species. Of the 15 listed corals for the Pacific, presence in US waters has only been confirmed for 6 species, all of them in American Samoa and 3 in Guam and the CNMI (see table below). Moreover, to a large extent many of the Pacific listed species are rare and difficult to identify given their similarity with other congeneric species. This creates a significant challenge to effectively identify these species in the field and collect presence/absence, demographic, and status information, which is critical to the management of these corals. Objectives: The 13th International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS)is scheduled to be held in Honolulu, Hawaii on 19–24 June 2016. This is the largest and most pertinent meeting that focuses on coral reef science and management. Given its relevance and the expected number of participants, it is the perfect platform to bring together a handful of experts that can provide guidance and training regarding the field identification challenges of the above mentioned listed species. As such, this one-year proposal seeks funds to conduct a Pacific ESA-listed Coral Species Identification Workshop at the 2016 International Coral Reef Symposium. To that end, our plan would be to invite a handful of international experts, who will be leading the workshop; while the core of the workshop participants (20-25 individuals) would be assembled from the 13th ICRS attendees, who beforehand had expressed interest. In a recent conversation with Dr. Robert Richmond, Symposium Convener, he expressed his support for the idea and encouraged us to submit a 13th ICRS Workshop Proposal (when the call opens in August) and offered a variety of potential venues for the Workshop, with access to microscopes, etc., potentially at the NOAA IRC facility, the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, or the University of Hawaii Kewalo Marine Laboratory. Needs addressed: Species-level identification is particularly important to assess the status of coral populations (abundance, structure, and spatial distribution), especially those species listed under the ESA. A coral species identification workshop would bring together taxonomy experts together with researchers and managers of the various jurisdictional agencies to improve our collective capacity to identify corals these species in the field. This project is conceived as a 1-year effort to: 1) provide advanced instruction on coral species-level identification; 2) build local and regional capacity for the effective identification of these species in the field; and 3) facilitate communication and the dissemination of information between taxonomic experts, research and monitoring program scientists and jurisdictional representatives at the workshop.

The main outcome expected from this workshop includes building jurisdictional capacity to effectively identify ESA-listed coral species in the field, which represents a significant challenge given the taxonomic uncertainties that exist for some of the ESA-listed Pacific coral species. Tangible products will include: 1) training materials and guides that jurisdictional partner agencies can keep and use for continued internal training; 2) creation of a network of resource managers and scientists to encourage and facilitate exchange of information, and 3) written record of workshop proceedings.

• Global

Other Domestic or Global Project

Closed

Completed

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