Over the past 4 decades, Hawaii has developed a system of Marine Life Conservation Districts (MLCDs) to conserve and replenish marine resources. These MLCDs vary in size, habitat quality, and management regimes, providing an excellent opportunity to test hypotheses concerning ...

As humans expand into natural environments, populations of wild organisms may become relegated to marginal habitats at the boundaries of their distributions. In the ocean, mesophotic coral ecosystems (30–150 m) at the depth limit of photosynthetic reefs are hypothesized to act ...

Corals at the lower limits of mesophotic habitats are likely to have unique photosynthetic adaptations that allow them to persist and dominate in these extreme low light ecosystems. We examined the host–symbiont relationships from the dominant coral genus Leptoseris in ...

NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program is developing a national monitoring plan for all coral reefs under the US jurisdiction – including Pacific, Atlantic, Gulf and Caribbean. This National Coral Reef Monitoring Plan (NCRMP) builds upon a decade of work supported ...

Deep-sea corals in Southern California are diverse and abundant but subject to multiple stressors, including bottom-contact fisheries using mobile and fixed gear. There is a need for more information on the distribution of these taxa in relation to the distribution ...

Mesophotic reef corals remain largely unexplored in terms of the genetic adaptations and physiological mechanisms to acquire, allocate, and use energy for survival and reproduction. In the Hawaiian Archipelago, the Leptoseris species complex form the most spatially extensive mesophotic coral ...

Oceanographic features, such as eddies and fronts, enhance and concentrate productivity, generating high-quality patches that dispersive marine larvae may encounter in the plankton. Although broad-scale movement of larvae associated with these features can be captured in biophysical models, direct evidence ...

On August 12-31, 2017 the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) led a research expedition aboard NOAA Ship Nancy Foster supported by NOAA’s Deep Sea Coral Research and Technology Program (DSCRTP) through the Southeast Deep Coral Initiative (SEDCI). The ...

Pillar coral (Dendrogyra cylindrus) is a rare Caribbean coral with only one species in its genus. Because of population declines, the species was listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 2014 (Federal Register 2014). By 2020, the ...

Fishery‐independent surveys can provide accurate and precise data for stock assessments and spatial management to sustain fishery resources as a complementary or alternative source of information to fishery‐dependent sampling. Four years of underwater visual survey data collected in several local ...