Mesophotic and Deep Benthic Communities: Mesophotic Fish and Coral Presence, Absence, and Density Data in the Northeast Gulf of Mexico from 2018-04-18 to 2020-08-04 (NCEI Accession 0276878)

Presence, absence and density information for fish and corals in the northeast Gulf of Mexico and the West Florida shelf. Data was collected from three different projects over a two-year period from 2018-2020. The Deepwater Horizon Natural Resource Damage Assessment, Open Ocean Trustee Implementation Group’s Mesophotic and Deep Benthic Communities Restoration: Coral Propagation Technique Development (CPT) Project funded re-analysis of previously collected, separately funded ROV video surveys for acquisition of relevant coral and sponge presence, absence, and density data, and performed a quality assurance/quality check prior to submitting the data to NCEI. Data is formatted into two Excel spreadsheets, one with observations and one with absence data. This data package also includes representative images for each site taken from ROV video.

This dataset was generated by William F. Patterson III, University of Florida (UF) during ROV surveys undertaken to monitor Lionfish trap sites and to perform a count of Red Snapper at designated areas. The corresponding video was then analyzed for corals and sponges by Joe Tarnecki at UF. The coral and sponge data in this accession were funded by the Mesophotic and Deep Benthic Communities Restoration: Coral Propagation Technique Development (CPT) project. Members of the CPT Project performed a quality check on the annotations prior to submission to NCEI.