Preface

Abstract

This special issue on Advances in Ecosystem-Scale Coral Reef Visual Surveys focuses on large-scale monitoring efforts that inform ecological and management topics that are highly relevant and timely as coral reefs worldwide continue to decline. For the past two decades, probability surveys have been implemented by federal, state, territorial, county, and academic partners. The probability surveys’ randomized design, large spatial scale, consistent methodology, participant expertise, and consistent temporal data collection have resulted in high quality, geographically comprehensive coral reef ecosystem data in the US Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea. More recent advances in these long-term, periodic jurisdictional assessments have broad applicability to other coral reef jurisdictions looking to implement ecosystem-scale surveys. In particular, this special issue captures the many advances in ecosystem-scale coral reef visual surveys as it relates to the following themes: (1) Survey statistical design; (2) Reef fish, coral, and motile invertebrate ecology; and, (3) Ecosystem and fisheries management.Collectively, the ten visual census publications herein underscore the importance of these data to assess the present status and trends of the coral reef communities and specific assemblages (e.g., fishery-targeted species, benthic communities; Grove et al. 2024a, Viehman et al. 2024), habitat use (i.e., by species, life stage, guilds; Heidmann et al. 2024, Herbig et al. 2024), responses to anthropogenic stressors (Aeby et al. 2024) and episodic events (e.g., hurricanes; Langwiser et al. 2024), and to inform the fisheries management process (e.g., reliable fishery-independent indices; Ault et al. 2024) and support management actions (e.g., no-take marine reserves, size and bag limits; Keller et al. 2024). Notable advances in these long-term, large-scale surveys include an expansion to a new region (i.e., mesophotic reefs; Grove et al. 2024b, Heidmann et al. 2024) and to a new species (i.e., spiny lobster, Richter and Feeley 2024) in the US Caribbean. In addition, multiple publications use visual census data for new applications such as analyses (e.g., comparing uncalibrated survey indices, Langwiser et al. 2024), ecosystem status reports (Viehman et al. 2024, Grove et al. 2024a) and to inform the efficacy of place-based investments (i.e., restoration, Herbig et al. 2024), a current focus of coral reef conservation.As the breadth of research on these three visual census themes continues to expand in the US Atlantic and Caribbean, we hope to include related, subsequent publications as a second section to this special issue.