Dataset Information

Dataset of coral reefs monitoring, Puerto Morelos, Mexico, 2019.

ABSTRACT: Noticeable within the Mexican Caribbean is the Arrecife de Puerto Morelos National Park (APMNP), a marine protected area established as an essential component for managing and protecting coral reefs. In June 2019, we conducted a survey in eight shallow reef sites of the APMNP with the purpose of applying a coral reef assessment method, based on biological indicators of the condition of both benthos and fish communities. In this paper we present tables with data of biological and ecological variables such as: benthos coverage, species composition and abundance of corals, abundance of urchins and coral recruits, bleaching, coral diseases and coral mortality percent, reef relief, and composition and abundance of key commercial and herbivorous fish species. The research article related to these databases was published in the journal Diversity with the title: Puerto Morelos coral reefs, current state and their classification by a scoring system.

SUBMITTER: Caballero-Aragon H

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9117548 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Dataset of coral reefs monitoring, Puerto Morelos, Mexico, 2019.

Caballero-Aragón Hansel H Perera-Valderrama Susana S Cerdeira-Estrada Sergio S Martell-Dubois Raúl R Rosique-de la Cruz Laura L Álvarez-Filip Lorenzo L Pérez-Cervantes Esmeralda E Estrada-Saldivar Nuria N Ressl Rainer R

Data in brief 20220511

Noticeable within the Mexican Caribbean is the Arrecife de Puerto Morelos National Park (APMNP), a marine protected area established as an essential component for managing and protecting coral reefs. In June 2019, we conducted a survey in eight shallow reef sites of the APMNP with the purpose of applying a coral reef assessment method, based on biological indicators of the condition of both benthos and fish communities. In this paper we present tables with data of biological and ecological varia ...[more]

PMID: 35599817

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Project description:Globally increasing sea surface temperatures threaten coral reefs, both directly and through interactions with local stressors. More resilient reefs have a higher likelihood of returning to a coral-dominated state following a disturbance, such as a mass bleaching event. To advance practical approaches to reef resilience assessments and aid resilience-based management of coral reefs, we conducted a resilience assessment for Puerto Rico's coral reefs, modified from methods used in other U.S. jurisdictions. We calculated relative resilience scores for 103 sites from an existing commonwealth-wide survey using eight resilience indicators-such as coral diversity, macroalgae percent cover, and herbivorous fish biomass-and assessed which indicators most drove resilience. We found that sites of very different relative resilience were generally highly spatially intermixed, underscoring the importance and necessity of decision making and management at fine scales. In combination with information on levels of two localized stressors (fishing pressure and pollution exposure), we used the resilience indicators to assess which of seven potential management actions could be used at each site to maintain or improve resilience. Fishery management was the management action that applied to the most sites. Furthermore, we combined sites' resilience scores with projected ocean warming to assign sites to vulnerability categories. Island-wide or community-level managers can use the actions and vulnerability information as a starting point for resilience-based management of their reefs. This assessment differs from many previous ones because we tested how much information could be yielded by a "desktop" assessment using freely-available, existing data rather than from a customized, resilience-focused field survey. The available data still permitted analyses comparable to previous assessments, demonstrating that desktop resilience assessments can substitute for assessments with field components under some circumstances.

Project description:Corals are colonial animals within the Phylum Cnidaria that form coral reefs, playing a significant role in marine environments by providing habitat for fish, mollusks, crustaceans, sponges, algae, and other organisms. Global climate changes are causing more intense and frequent thermal stress events, leading to corals losing their color due to the disruption of a symbiotic relationship with photosynthetic endosymbionts. Given the importance of corals to the marine environment, monitoring coral reefs is critical to understanding their response to anthropogenic impacts. Most coral monitoring activities involve underwater photographs, which can be costly to generate on large spatial scales and require processing and analysis that may be time-consuming. The Marine Ecology Laboratory (LECOM) at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) developed the project "#DeOlhoNosCorais" which encourages users to post photos of coral reefs on their social media (Instagram) using this hashtag, enabling people without previous scientific training to contribute to coral monitoring. The laboratory team identifies the species and gathers information on coral health along the Brazilian coast by analyzing each picture posted on social media. To optimize this process, we conducted baseline experiments for image classification and semantic segmentation. We analyzed the classification results of three different machine learning models using the Local Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanations (LIME) algorithm. The best results were achieved by combining EfficientNet for feature extraction and Logistic Regression for classification. Regarding semantic segmentation, the U-Net Pix2Pix model produced a pixel-level accuracy of 86%. Our results indicate that this tool can enhance image selection for coral monitoring purposes and open several perspectives for improving classification performance. Furthermore, our findings can be expanded by incorporating other datasets to create a tool that streamlines the time and cost associated with analyzing coral reef images across various regions.

Project description:BackgroundPredation pressure and herbivory exert cascading effects on coral reef health and stability. However, the extent of these cascading effects can vary considerably across space and time. This variability is likely a result of the complex interactions between coral reefs' biotic and abiotic dimensions. A major biological component that has been poorly integrated into the reefs' trophic studies is the microbial community, despite its role in coral death and bleaching susceptibility. Viruses that infect bacteria can control microbial densities and may positively affect coral health by controlling microbialization. We hypothesize that viral predation of bacteria has analogous effects to the top-down pressure of macroorganisms on the trophic structure and reef health.ResultsHere, we investigated the relationships between live coral cover and viruses, bacteria, benthic algae, fish biomass, and water chemistry in 110 reefs spanning inhabited and uninhabited islands and atolls across the Pacific Ocean. Statistical learning showed that the abundance of turf algae, viruses, and bacteria, in that order, were the variables best predicting the variance in coral cover. While fish biomass was not a strong predictor of coral cover, the relationship between fish and corals became apparent when analyzed in the context of viral predation: high coral cover (> 50%) occurred on reefs with a combination of high predator fish biomass (sum of sharks and piscivores > 200 g m-2) and high virus-to-bacteria ratios (> 10), an indicator of viral predation pressure. However, these relationships were non-linear, with reefs at the higher and lower ends of the coral cover continuum displaying a narrow combination of abiotic and biotic variables, while reefs at intermediate coral cover showed a wider range of parameter combinations.ConclusionsThe results presented here support the hypothesis that viral predation of bacteria is associated with high coral cover and, thus, coral health and stability. We propose that combined predation pressures from fishes and viruses control energy fluxes, inhibiting the detrimental accumulation of ecosystem energy in the microbial food web.

Dataset Information

Dataset of coral reefs monitoring, Puerto Morelos, Mexico, 2019.

Publications

Dataset of coral reefs monitoring, Puerto Morelos, Mexico, 2019.

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