Investigating mesophotic coral ecosystems in the waters surrounding the Caribbean islands of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) is the purpose of a National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science-supported research mission. Mesophotic coral ecosystems – ‘meso’ for middle and ‘photic’ for light – are the deepest of the light-dependent coral reefs and are [...]
NOAA-funded scientists found extensive and biologically diverse coral ecosystems occurring at depths between 100-330 feet within a 12 mile span off the southwestern coast of Puerto Rico. With the overall health of shallow coral reefs and the abundance of reef fish in Puerto Rico in decline, this finding brings hope that deeper fish stocks may [...]
National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science-sponsored scientists have discovered and described a new red algal genus and species from coral reef habitats in Puerto Rico. The new species, Cresia opalescens, is a small species of the red algae division Rhodophyta that inhabits crevices and small spaces in coral reefs. The chosen generic name honors the [...]
The National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) supports competitively-funded, regional, multiyear, multidisciplinary ecosystem research, modeling, and information delivery activities to improve predictions and management decisions in the coastal ocean and Great Lakes. In 2010 NCCOS advanced understanding and developed tools for management in three major research areas: hypoxia, deep light-dependent coral reefs, and harmful [...]
Scientists from the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science recently returned from a successful field mission to Guanica, Puerto Rico. This mission was a core component of a larger collaborative effort to restore the Guanica Bay watershed and improve the condition of the neighboring coral reef ecosystem. The co-led NCCOS/University of Puerto Rico component of [...]
NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science announced the launch of the Vieques Biogeography Integrated Online Mapper (BIOMapper). BIOMapper lets users interactively view data, aerial imagery, dive photography, underwater video, and related publications for the “Ecological Characterization of the Marine Resources of Vieques, Puerto Rico” project. The tool is an easy way to view the benthic [...]
The marine environment of Vieques, Puerto Rico appears to be less impacted by human activities than expected, according to researchers from the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) on June 4. Despite 62 years of U.S. Navy activities, including live bombing exercises around much of the island, contamination of coastal sediments and corals was [...]
Scientists from the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science and NMFS’s Chesapeake Bay Program Office (CBPO), in cooperation with partners from the Jobos Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (JBNERR), collected bathymetry and sidescan data from April 6th to 20th between the municipalities of Guayama and Salinas, Puerto Rico. These acoustic datasets were collected using an interferometric side-scan [...]