Southeast Florida Coral Reef Evaluation and Monitoring Project: 2004, Year 2 Final Report

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission; National Coral Reef Institute

The coral reef ecosystem in Florida extends beyond the Florida Keys northward through Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, and, Martin Counties; however, the primary focus for coral reef research and long-term monitoring has long been in the Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas. Coral reef monitoring efforts in the Keys grew exponentially with the establishment of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS). Since 1996, the Coral Reef Evaluation and Monitoring Project (QREMP) has documented changes in reef resources throughout the Florida reef tract from Key West to Carysfort. In 1999 the project was expanded, to include 3 sites in the Dry Tortugas. In 2003 CREMP was further expanded to include 10 sites offshore southeast Florida in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties. Two years (2003 and 2004) of sampling have been completed. This CREMP expansion, named the Southeast Florida Coral Reef Evaluation and Monitoring Project (SECREMP), will assist in filling gaps in coverage of knowledge and monitoring of coral reef ecosystems nationwide and complement the goals of the National Monitoring Network to monitor a minimum suite of parameters at sites in the network. In addition, these efforts will assist the National Monitoring Network in building its capacity to archive biotic attributes of coral reef ecosystems nationwide. The coral reef ecosystem off southeast Florida is a marginal system near the environmental threshold for significant reef growth. Southeast Florida reefs generally have reduced stony coral species richness and stony coral cover than the Dry Tortugas or Florida Keys coral reefs. Benthic cover by octocorals is, interestingly, very similar throughout the Florida reef system while southeast Florida reefs appear to have reduced macro algae cover compared to reefs in the Dry Tortugas and the Florida Keys. Although it is not possible to identify trends with only two years of data, in general, the status of the southeast Florida reef system has changed little from 2003 to 2004. Stony coral species richness (Table 3; Figure 3) and cover are very similar between years (Figure 4; Tables 6 and 7). There appears to have been a greater incidence of bleaching and disease in 2004 compared to 2003. The fate of the diseased colonies .will be tracked through the use of images taken of each colony in 2004. The percent cover of the major functional groups has also remained similar between years (Tables 8, 9, and 1 0; Figure 5). Substrate and octocora1s remain the two groups with the most cover for the region. Site BCA was added to the project as the fourth site in Broward County for the purpose of monitoring one of the unique Acropora cervicornis patches. With the recent interest in listing A. cerVicornis as a protected species, it is important to note that BCA A. cervicornis cover increased slightly from 31% in 2003 to 39% in 2004.