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Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation CommissionNational Marine SanctuariesSportfish RestorationUS EPA

Coral Reef Evaluation and Monitoring Project (CREMP)

The primary goal of the monitoring project is to measure the status and trends of these communities to assist managers in understanding, protecting, and restoring the living marine resources of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Data from the project will be used to determine (1) overall net increase or decrease in stony coral percent cover and stony coral species richness, (2) overall net change in measurable reef community parameters, (3) changes observed in individual reef communities with no overall change on a landscape scale (decreases in one location balanced by increases elsewhere) or changes that are linked to specific regions of the landscape. Each of these potential mechanisms of change will result in different spatial patterns of change. A Sanctuary-wide, rather than a single-location survey, is necessary to detect ecosystem change.

This Sanctuary-wide project is documenting the status of reef habitats at 40 reef sites located within 5 of the 9 EPA Water Quality Segments in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Over the duration of the project, the randomly located reefs in this project may show no net decline. Alternatively, some or all the reefs may show a net decline. Data for each successive sampling year will be compared with prior year’s data to obtain a broader understanding of the dynamics of the FKNMS coral reef system. As the coral reef monitoring is integrated with the seagrass and water quality programs, the results can be used to focus research on determining causality and can be used to inform and evaluate management decisions. The Coral Reef/ Hardbottom Monitoring Project provides the first real opportunity in the Florida Keys to address these questions at the spatial scales required to detect large-scale patterns and discriminate between hypotheses.

Products

Adobe Acrobat is needed to view the reports below. For a free copy of Acrobat Reader, click on the icon at the bottom of the page.

Reports:
Annual Report, 1996 (PDF, 1.7 MB)
Annual Report, 1997 (PDF, 8.3 MB)
Annual Report, 2000 (PDF,1.6 MB)
Executive Summary, 2001 (PDF, 758 KB)
Executive Summary, 2002 (PDF, 607 KB)
Executive Summary, 2003 (PDF, 1 MB)
Executive Summary, 2004 (PDF, 16.5 MB)
Executive Summary, 2005 (PDF, 610 KB)
Executive Summary, 2006 (PDF, 3 MB)
Executive Summary, 2007 (PDF, 3 MB)
Metadata:
Station Species Inventory
Benthic Cover

Movies:
Video Data Collection - audio included ( AVI, 82.7 MB)
Swim Through a Sampling Station (AVI, 23 MB)
Station Species Inventory (AVI, 32 MB)

Data:
Species Inventory, Percent Cover, and Statistical Analysis and Summary, 1995-2006 (Excel, 1.25 MB)

GIS Project:
Coral Reef Evaluation and Monitoring Project ArcView project

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Coral Reef Monitoring
on the Web:
FWC/FWRI - Coral Reef Evaluation and Monitoring Project (CREMP)
CREMP Contact:
Jennifer Wheaton
Project Manager
Phone: (727) 896-8626
jennifer.wheaton@myfwc.com

Florida Fish and Wildlife
   Conservation Commission
Fish and Wildlife
   Research Institute
100 Eighth Avenue SE
St. Petersburg, Florida 33701