Clark, R., Viehman, S., Bauer, L., Buckel, C. A., Egan, K., Vander Pluym, J.

National Coral Reef Monitoring Program, Biological Monitoring Atlantic/Caribbean: St. Thomas and St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands 2013 Mission Data Report

2015

Silver Spring, MD

NOAA National Ocean Service, National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS)

63

"The National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP) is a strategic plan developed by NOAAs Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) to monitor all U.S. coral reef ecosystems with standardized methodologies (https://www.coris.noaa.gov/monitoring/). The primary monitoring objectives include: Develop consistent survey designs, field protocols and training tools Survey fish and coral communities to track status and trends Collect water samples for NCRMP Climate team Provide status and trend information to local resource managers Disseminate data to the public Provide data summaries annually This report addresses a subset of the Atlantic/Caribbean sampling domain and provides summary statistics for reef fish and benthic data collected during 2013 surveys in the USVI (St. John and St. Thomas only). All data used in this report are available upon request. Accomplishments and highlights of the 2013 USVI Mission: Trained 37 divers from 7 agencies 283 fish and Line point-intercept (LPI) surveys; 221 coral demographic surveys First island-wide survey for St. Thomas and first for the domain of St. John/Thomas 72 water collections for NCRMP Climate team Transportable data entry system"

National Coral Reef Monitoring Plan (NCRMP); biological monitoring

CRCP Project ID 743; Project Title: National Coral Reef Monitoring Plan (NCRMP) Implementation (Biological Monitoring); Principal Investigator: Justine Kimball