Coral Reefs

The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council and NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program would like your input on the condition of coral reefs in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Our primary concern is the conservation of Florida's coral habitats, which range from the Dry Tortugas National Park, approximately 60 miles west of Key West, to Martin County, approximately 100 miles north of Miami and up the gulf coast of Florida. These extremely diverse habitats provide shelter, food, and breeding sites for a wide variety of commercially and aesthetically important organisms.

Coral News and Information
General information on corals, including images of the most common coral species found in Florida.

Coral Reef Evaluation and Monitoring Project (CREMP)
CREMP has monitored the condition of coral reef and hardbottom habitats annually throughout the Florida Keys since 1996, southeast Florida since 2003, and the Dry Tortugas since 2004. It is one of the longest running coral reef monitoring projects in south Florida and has been extremely important in documenting the temporal changes that have occurred in recent years.

Disturbance Response Monitoring (DRM) program
The DRM program was developed for monitoring shallow reef systems from Martin County to the Dry Tortugas to better understand how rising sea temperatures will affect Florida’s coral reefs.

Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease
Florida's coral reefs are experiencing a multi-year outbreak of stony coral tissue loss disease.