Publisher : Bulletin of Marine Science
Place of publication :
Publication year : 2005
Thematic : Coral Reef
Language : English
Note
Only a small percentage of deep-water reefs have had their benthic and fish resources
characterized. This study surveyed eight deep-water, high-relief, hard-bottom
sites off south Florida using human occupied submersibles to characterize habitat
and describe the fish and macrobenthic communities: the Naples deep-water sinkhole
on the southwest Florida shelf, Jordan and Marathon deep-water sinkholes on
the Pourtalès Terrace, and five high-relief bioherms on the Pourtalès Terrace. These
submersible dives were the first to enter and explore any of these features. The upper
sinkhole rims ranged from 175 to 461 m in depth and had a maximum relief of
180 m. The Jordan sinkhole may be one of the deepest and largest sinkholes known.
The high-relief bioherms occurred at depths of 198–319 m, with a maximum height
of 120 m. A total of 26 and 16 fish taxa were identified from the sinkhole and bioherm
sites, respectively. Species of potentially commercial importance included
tilefish, sharks, speckled hind, yellowedge grouper, warsaw grouper, snowy grouper,
blackbelly rosefish, red porgy, drum, scorpionfish, amberjack, and phycid hakes. In
total, 66 Porifera taxa were identified and four are possible new species. Twentyone
species of Cnidaria included Antipatharia (three spp.), stylasterid hydrocorals
(five spp.), octocorals (11 spp.), and one scleractinian. The benthic communities of
the Pourtalès Terrace bioherms differed from the bioherms along the northeastern
Straits of Florida primarily in that the Pourtalès Terrace communities lacked the
scleractinian coral Lophelia pertusa (Linnaeus, 1758) and stalked crinoids.
Go to source
Keywords : Gillnets
Encoded by : Pauline Carmel Joy Eje