Coral weight from a study of year-long effects of high pCO2 on the community structure of a tropical fore reef assembled in outdoor flumes in Moorea, French Polynesia from 2017 to 2018

This coral calcification dataset includes the weight of the corals as used to report net changes in mass (Gnet). Flume physical and chemical conditions are provided as a supplemental file. These data are part of a study of year-long effects of high pCO2 on the community structure of a tropical fore reef assembled in outdoor flumes in Moorea, French Polynesia from 2017 to 2018.

These coral calcification data support publication (Edmunds et al., 2020; doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsaa015) with the following abstract:

In this study, fore reef coral communities were exposed to high pCO2 for a year to explore the relationship between net accretion (Gnet) and community structure (planar area growth). Coral reef communities simulating the fore reef at 17-m depth on Mo’orea, French Polynesia, were assembled in three outdoor flumes (each 500 l) that were maintained at ambient (396 matm), 782 matm, and 1434 matm pCO2, supplied with seawater at 300 l h 1, and exposed to light simulating 17-m depth. The communities were constructed using corals from the fore reef, and the responses of massive Porites spp., Acropora spp., and Pocillopora verrucosa were assessed through monthly measurements of Gnet and planar area. High pCO2 depressed Gnet but did not affect colony area by taxon, although the areas of Acropora spp. and P. verrucosa summed to cause multivariate community structure to differ among treatments. These results suggest that skeletal plasticity modulates the effects of reduced Gnet at high pCO2 on planar growth, at least over a year. The low sensitivity of the planar growth of fore reef corals to the effects of ocean acidification.