Assessing cryptic reef diversity of colonizing marine invertebrates using Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures (ARMS) deployed at coral reef sites in Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guine...

Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures (ARMS) are used by the NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) to assess and monitor cryptic reef diversity across the Pacific. Developed in collaboration with the Census of Marine Life (CoML) Census of Coral Reef Ecosystems (CReefs), ARMS are designed to mimic the structural complexity of a reef and attract/collect colonizing marine invertebrates. The key innovation of the ARMS method is biodiversity is sampled over precisely the same surface area in the exact same manner. Thus, the use of ARMS is a systematic, consistent, and comparable method for monitoring the marine cryptobiota community over time.

The data described here were collected by CREP from ARMS units moored at fixed climate survey sites located in Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea. Climate sites were established by CREP to assess multiple features of the coral reef environment (in addition to the data described herein) from September 2009 to September 2012, and three ARMS units were deployed by SCUBA divers at each survey site. The data can be accessed online via the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Ocean Archive.

Each ARMS unit, constructed in-house by CREP, consisted of 23 cm x 23 cm gray, type 1 PVC plates stacked in alternating series of 4 open and 4 obstructed layers and attached to a base plate of 35 cm x 45 cm, which was affixed to the reef. Upon recovery, each ARMS unit was encapsulated, brought to the surface, and disassembled and processed. Disassembled plates were photographed to document recruited sessile organisms and scraped clean and preserved in 95% ethanol for DNA processing. Recruited motile organisms were sieved into 3 size fractions: 2 mm, 500 µm, and 100 µm. The 500 µm and 100 µm fractions were bulked and also preserved in 95% ethanol for DNA processing. The 2 mm fraction was sorted into morphospecies. This dataset includes information on the species counted and identified in the 2 mm fraction.

The Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) at NOAA Fisheries is conducting in-situ climate monitoring across the U.S. Pacific Islands Region. Climate monitoring provides a comprehensive view of climate change impacts on coral reef ecosystems and helps identify areas of resilience and vulnerability. The key indicators used to identify and monitor climate-driven trends include 1) thermal stress caused by changes in sea temperature, 2) ocean acidification resulting from changes in carbonate chemistry, and 3) ecological impacts by collecting data on coral growth rates and community structure to understand the impacts of thermal stress and ocean acidification on the ecosystem.

This particular dataset for Papua New Guinea was funded by NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Regional Development Mission Asia (RDMA) as part of the U.S. Coral Triangle Initiative.

The goal of the project was to build on CREP's expertise to provide tools and information about climate change, ocean acidification, and their impacts on biodiversity and fisheries that could inform and be incorporated into an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management (EAFM) for Papua New Guinea.

The NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) traveled to Kimbe Bay in September 2012 to retrieve a suite of instruments in Kimbe Bay that were deployed in September 2009. The mission was funded by NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) and in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Walindi Plantation Resort (WPR), the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and James Cook University (JCU).

The purpose of the mission was to retrieve and deploy moored oceanographic (subsurface temperature recorders [STRs], sea surface temperature [SST] buoys, an ecological acoustic recorder [EAR]) and ecological (calcification accretion units [CAUs], autonomous reef monitoring structures [ARMS]) instrumentation, to collect surface and bottom water samples, and to conduct benthic photo-quadrat surveys. This dataset only includes ARMS specimens.

In addition to the nine total Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures [ARMS] that were processed to be sent to back to the US, a tenth ARMS unit was recovered from a fourth site for outreach purposes with a local community organization (Mahonia) as well as for partners unfamiliar with ARMS data (TNC and WPR).

Specimen retrieval data includes metadata for each ARMS unit (where, deployment / retrieval date) and individual specimens identified to the lowest taxonomic level possible along with a count. Each column is described in the entities and attributes section.

While every effort has been made to ensure that these data are accurate and reliable within the limits of the current state of the art, NOAA cannot assume liability for any damages caused by errors or omissions in the data, nor as a result of the failure of the data to function on a particular system. NOAA makes no warranty, expressed or implied, nor does the fact of distribution constitute such a warranty.

Kimbe Bay in Papua New Guinea

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NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) Data Sharing Recommendations, version 9.0 updated August 12, 2015:

CREP welcomes the opportunity to collaborate on research issues contributing to the scientific basis for better management of marine ecosystems. CREP has a very diverse set of field activities that generates large volumes of data using an array of data collection protocols.

The following recommendations are for your consideration as you use this data:

1) Data analyses should take all field exigencies into account. The most effective way to do this would be active collaboration with CREP principal investigators.

2) In all presentations, product releases, or publications using data generated by CREP, proper acknowledgement of both CREP and the individuals responsible for data collection is expected. Citing the DOI (if available) is preferred, a non-DOI example is listed below.

3) If you collect or generate data for the same study areas, CREP requests that you share relevant information on complimentary data collections.

4) Those receiving data are strongly urged to inform the CREP Data Management Team of any errors and discrepancies that are discovered during the course of using these data. They are further urged to bring to the attention of the Team all problems and difficulties encountered in using these data. This information is necessary in order to improve the collections and to facilitate more efficient and economical data processing and retrieval. The users are asked to supply copies of any missing data that may be located, and to provide information as to significant subsets and special aggregations of data that are developed in using the material provided.

Example citation:

"This publication makes use of data products provided by the Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP), Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC), National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with funding support from the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) and the United States Agency for International Development. The analysis and interpretations presented here are solely that of the current authors.”

Data can be accessed online via the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Ocean Archive.

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Please cite NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) when using the data.

Suggested citation:

Coral Reef Ecosystem Program; Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (2021). Assessing cryptic reef diversity of colonizing marine invertebrates using Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures (ARMS) deployed at coral reef sites in Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea from 2009 to 2012. NOAA's National Center for Environmental Information, https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/inport/item/0237816.

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Microsoft Access

All species identifications are made visually by a trained analyst and subsequently reviewed by a taxonomic expert or through molecular processing for accuracy.

All ARMS units that are recovered are disassembled, photographed, and sorted by size. Taxonomic classification occurs for materials greater than 2 mm. The research and development of the genetic analysis of ARMS samples is being done in collaboration with partners and data may exist for a subset of locations. ARMS that have been deployed may not have been recovered due to logistical constraints of the following mission or could not be found when divers returned to the site.

ARMS sample biodiversity over precisely the same surface area in the exact same manner. Thus, the use of ARMS is a systematic, consistent, and comparable method for monitoring the cryptobiota community overtime. Three units are deployed at each site to allow for replicate measurements. Divers typically record ARMS metadata into the master Microsoft Access database within a few days of the field operations and/or ARMS processing. QA/QC procedures are typically completed during the field mission.

The data entered in the MS Access database is quality controlled following data entry.

NOAA IRC and NOAA Fisheries ITS resources and assets. The MS Access database is stored on the PIFSC network and regularly backed up by ITS.

Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures (ARMS) are assembled, deployed on the benthos for 1-3 years during which time they are colonized with marine organisms, recovered and processed as described below. The > 2-mm organisms are identified and counted, and the data is recorded in an MS Access database.