Perez, Denise; Camacho, Rodney; Hasegawa, Kyle; Iguel, John; Benavente, David

CNMI State of the Reef Report 2020-2021

2021

CNMI Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality; Division of Coastal Resources Management

"The State of the Reef report summarizes activities conducted within the long-term marine monitoring program under the Division of Coastal Resources Management from 2020-21. Within the program, the marine monitoring team (MMT) completed > 55 field surveys encompassing coral reef, seagrass, and boulder habitat across the Northern Marians Islands, including: Rota, Aguijan, Tinian, Saipan, and Pagan. Overall, coral reefs in the CNMI are still recovering from previous mass bleaching events that caused mass coral mortality. In particular, forereef areas around Saipan and Rota have had continued decline in live coral cover due to crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) predation during outbreaks that began in 2019. The MMT has since documented COTS densities 48x higher than the average recorded over the past twenty years. In 2021, the MMT observed a decline in reported outbreaks, but are continuing surveillance and eradication efforts as needed. Since there has been a break in bleaching events since 2017, coral recovery has been noted at several sites including lagoon areas outside of Marianas Resort and San Antonio back reef. However, Staghorn corals, which decreased by 30.6 - 98.7% in the past ten years, have yet to recover at most of the lagoon reef sites. In 2020, the long-term marine monitoring program was expanded to include coral restoration as one of its objectives, and led the development of a coral restoration action plan for the CNMI. In addition, the MMT is responsible for managing the state-funded coral nursery, which currently stocks 3 Acroporid species with planned expansion of nursery capacity and species collection in 2022."

CNMI, coral reef, coral reef monitoring, long-term monitoring, benthic cover, coral cover, crown-of-thorns starfish, coral restoration

NOS

OCM

FY2019 CRCP Project ID 31225; Project Title: FY19/FY20 - State and Territorial Coral Reef Conservation Cooperative Agreements; Principal Investigator: Craig Reid; Grant NA19NOS4820052.

NA19NOS4820052