Line Intercept Data for Projected Cover of Montastrea annularis (now Orbicella) on Dancing Lady Reef, Discovery Bay, Jamaica, 1972

As a result of the 2018 CRESCYNT Coral Data Rescue Workshop, put on by NCEAS and funded by EarthCube, a subset of coral biologist Phillip Dustan’s legacy coral abundance data was preserved and released to the public. The data, originally collected for Dustan’s doctoral thesis (Dustan, P., 1975), represent a survey of the abundance of the Montastrea annularis species complex (today known as Orbicella) collected on Dancing Lady Reef, Discovery Bay, Jamaica in 1972. The data were collected using the line intercept method (sensu Loya, 1972), stored in a punch card format and have since been converted into a digital text file format. All records collected for this study include line intercept measurements of Montastrea annularis corals along with characteristics of their growth form, colony color, ectodermal color, stomodael color and the presence or absence of M. laevis. Having these historic abundance data available today provides a vital piece of the timeline that can be used to better understand the long term ecological trends of this region. The efforts from Dustan and data stewards at the CRESCYNT workshop resulted in the preservation and release of a single transect from the original dataset. The process and lessons that are documented can be applied to the future preservation of other legacy transect data. Users can reference Phillip Dustan's thesis for context on original study: Dustan, P. 1975. Genecological differentiation in the reef-building coral Montastrea annularis, Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook.