Following up on last year’s contaminant characterization field mission, scientists from NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science recently completed a two-week field mission to the St. Thomas East End Reserve. This year’s mission culminates a two-year effort to develop a baseline understanding of the reserve’s contamination, its toxicity, and also marine resources protected within [...]
Resource managers are faced with environmental changes that threaten the health and vitality of coral reef ecosystems as a result of expanding coastal development, tourism and new industries in many Caribbean nations. To assist coral reef resource managers in their mitigation and conservation efforts, NCCOS, through the Coral Disease and Health Consortium with funding support [...]
From June 19-23, researchers from the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science will lead a research cruise in the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico. The cruise is the seventh of eight planned that will result in the most comprehensive spatial assessment of fish and benthic communities within the sanctuary [...]
On May 7-18, scientists from NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science and Southeast Fisheries Science Center led a multiagency field mission to conduct the most comprehensive visual fishery-independent characterization of fish and benthic communities around the island of St. Croix USVI to date. The mission was funded by NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program and [...]
Coral reef fish imported to the United States for saltwater aquariums are more diverse yet less numerous than previously thought, a new study suggests. The study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, found that fishes comprising 1,802 species from 125 families were imported into the United States over a yearlong study period. Previous estimates of [...]
The University of Puerto Rico research cruise, April 25-May 10, sponsored by the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, used high-resolution bathymetric mapping to further detail the distribution of MCEs within the U.S. Caribbean, which will aid in quantifying, understanding and eventually predicting their occurrence. Because MCEs serve as essential habitat and refugia for threatened [...]
NCCOS and OCRM’s Coral Reef Conservation Program successfully concluded a series of unique community outreach activities in Puerto Rico called “Reef Smart”—A Coral Reef Ecosystem Education Initiative. The 2012 Nancy Foster Mapping Mission to map Puerto Rico’s coral reef ecosystems and fish habitats served as a platform for hosting a series of unique events designed to engage students, [...]
Four years ago, lobster fisherman Gary Nichols had never laid eyes on a lionfish, but today his traps are full of them. “You’ll get two or three decent traps with lobster, but if you get four or five lionfish, the lobster don’t like it,” Nichols said. He says he catches so many lionfish now (up [...]