Abstract

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration's Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) strives to protect, conserve, and restore coral reef resources, including reef associated fisheries, by maintaining healthy ecosystem function. Since 2013, CRCP has supported the National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP) to collect biological, physical, and socioeconomic data throughout the U.S. Atlantic, Caribbean, and Pacific coral reef areas. The overarching goal of this effort is to collect the information needed to gauge the changing conditions of U.S. coral reef ecosystems and support well-informed ecosystem-based conservation and management. NCRMP is a long-term approach to provide an ecosystem prospective via monitoring fish, benthic, climate, and socioeconomic variables in a consistent and integrated manner, to provide information supporting NOAA and our State, Territorial, and other Federal partners efforts to more effectively manage and conserve our nation's coral reefs. NCRMP’s fishery-independent surveys gather data on reef fish abundance, size and species to better understand the status of reef fish populations. This work presents our current efforts in Florida, USVI, Puerto Rico and Flower Garden Banks to standardize methodologies and reporting to support the uptake and utilization of this data for management of coral reef fisheries.

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