Assessment of coral reef fish and benthic communities in the West Hawaii Habitat Focus Area from 2015-10-13 to 2015-10-23 (NCEI Accession 0210808)

This archive package contains data on species composition, density, size, and abundance for coral reef fish as well as coral counts, benthic cover, and macroalga cover in the West Hawaii Habitat Focus Area along the Kona coast of the island of Hawaii. Data provided in this collection were gathered as part of the NOAA Habitat Blueprint initiative with support from the Coral Reef Conservation Program. Data were collected primarily by The Nature Conservancy Hawaii. Data were collected in 2015 using the Belt Transect method. This is the first year in a series of monitoring efforts which have taken place in subsequent years to evaluate the resilience of coral reefs in the Focus Area. This dataset serves as a baseline as it was collected during the 2015 coral bleaching event. The dataset accompanies the NOAA technical report Maynard et al. 2016.