Monitoring

Coral Reef Monitoring

What Is Coral Reef Monitoring?

How Reefs Are Commonly Monitored

Benefits of Monitoring

Reef Monitoring Projects

The United States Virgin Islands Territorial Coral Reef Monitoring Program

The United States Virgin Islands Territorial Coral Reef Monitoring Program is one of the most important programs designed to monitor and track the status of the reefs in the US Virgin Islands. It is funded by NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program and administered by The Division of Coastal Zone Management under the USVI Department of Planning and Natural Resources Administration. They conduct an annual survey of the reefs within the US Virgin Islands.

Objectives: The objective of this program are to monitor and track the status of reefs and the inhabitants in areas around the US Virgin Islands; St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix. It also focuses on threats to reef systems such as pollution, overfishing, and thermal stress. They work closely to link changes in reef health with specific stressors and figure out the plan of action that would best preserve the reef and the fish communities. They also find ways to study threatened species as well as other components of the reef system that we know little information about.

Methodology/ Experimental Design: -Visual fish census -Belt transects -Roving dives -Fish counts