Sponge volume from repeated surveys in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, before and after the 2017 hurricane season

Prior to the 2017 hurricanes, six shallow (8-15 meter depth) reef sites had been selected from the Virgin Islands Territorial Coral Reef Monitoring Program’s (TCRMP) permanent monitoring sites to study variation in sponge communities - Black Point (BP), Coculus Rock (CR), and Magens Bay (MB), which are in embayments with heavily developed watersheds. Buck Island (BI) and Savana Island (SI) are located near undeveloped offshore cays. Botany Bay (BB) is a nearshore site in a bay with a low level of watershed development.

This dataset represents sponge volume from these repeated surveys before and after the 2017 hurricane season. We used three randomly selected transects out of the six permanently established 10-meter TCRMP transects at each site. The same three transects at each site were re-surveyed repeatedly in August 2016 (pre-hurricanes), December 2017 (10 weeks post-hurricanes), March 2018 (24 weeks post-hurricanes), November 2018 (61 weeks post-hurricanes), and July 2019 (93 weeks post-hurricanes).

2017年飓风季来临前，研究团队从维尔京群岛领地珊瑚礁监测计划（TCRMP）的永久监测点位中选取了6处水深8-15米的浅海珊瑚礁点位，以研究海绵群落的变异特征——其中黑角（Black Point, BP）、科库勒斯岩（Coculus Rock, CR）与马根斯湾（Magens Bay, MB）均位于流域开发程度较高的海湾内；巴克岛（Buck Island, BI）与萨瓦纳岛（Savana Island, SI）坐落于未开发的近海沙洲附近；植物学湾（Botany Bay, BB）则是一处位于流域开发程度较低海湾的近岸监测点位。
本数据集收录了2017年飓风季前后多次调查获取的海绵体积数据。研究人员在每个点位预设的6条10米长TCRMP永久样带中随机选取3条，并分别于2016年8月（飓风前）、2017年12月（飓风后10周）、2018年3月（飓风后24周）、2018年11月（飓风后61周）及2019年7月（飓风后93周）对各点位的这3条样带开展了重复调查。