CRED and partners: Environmental Monitoring of Coral Bleaching and Disease in the Hawaiian Islands; belt Surveys of Coral Population and Disease Assessments at Hawaii, Hawaii in 2010

The field data described herein are part of a joint NESDIS-NMFS project aimed at advancing the understanding of the occurrence, abundance, and outbreak of coral bleaching and disease in the Hawaiian Archipelago through expanded field surveys and in-situ and remotely-sensed temperature data. To this end Line-Point-Intercept (LPI), belt-transect surveys of coral population, and diseases quantitative assessments were conducted on HAWAII in the MAIN HAWAIIAN ISLANDS by the Coral Reef Ecosystem Division (CRED) at the NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC) and partners. At the specific sites, coral biologists conducted Line-Point-Intercept (LPI) and coral belt surveys, focused at quantifying the composition, relative abundance, density, and size-class distribution of the anthozoan and hydrozoan corals, as well as the condition and health state of the coral populations. The surveys were conducted along two consecutively-placed, 25m transect lines. The LPI surveys documented the composition of the coral reef community at 25 or 50cm intervals, for 50 or 100 points per transect. The belt width was 1-m wide (0.5-m on each side of the transect line), for community structure assessments, and 2-m wide (1.0-m on each side of the transect line), for coral condition and health surveys. Within each 25m transect, up to 15, 1.0-meter segments were surveyed, whereby in each segment, all coral colonies whose center fell within 0.5m of either side of the transect line were identified to the lowest taxonomic level possible (genus or species) and colony size visually estimated and binned by its maximum diameter in one of 7 size classes: 0-5cm, 5-10cm, 10-20cm, 20-40cm, 40-80cm, 80-160cm, or >160cm. When a coral colony exhibited signs of disease or compromised health, additional information was recorded including type of affliction (bleaching, skeletal growth anomaly, white syndrome, tissue loss other than white syndrome, trematodiasis, necrosis, other, pigmentation responses, algal overgrowth, and predation), severity of the affliction (mild, moderate, marked, severe, acute), as well as photographic documentation and sometimes tissue samples. Raw survey data included species presence and relative abundance, colony counts per taxon, size (width and length), mortality, predation, and health status. The surveyed area ranged from 25m2 to 50m2 per site.