Florida Reef Resilience Program (FRRP): Enhancing Resilience of Florida's Coral Reefs

2. What is the FRRP? The Florida Reef Resilience Program (FRRP) was initially established in 2004 to encourage knowledge and best practices sharing between the managers of the Great Barrier Reef and stakeholders of the Florida Reef System. The program has since evolved into a collaborative effort among reef managers, scientists and conservation organizations in Florida to develop, implement and support resilience based management strategies for coping with climate change and other stresses on Florida’s coral reefs. The FRRP is one component of The Nature Conservancy’s international Reef Resilience Network.

3. FRRP Partnership

4. FRRP Guidance The FRRP is guided by a steering committee made up of resource managers and scientists. • FRRP Accomplishments • Florida Reef Tract Bleaching Response Plan • Disturbance Response Monitoring (DRM) • Florida Reef Tract Climate Change Action Plan • Socio-economic studies to inform reef management efforts • Support for local reef management planning processes. Steering Committee Resource Managers Scientists

6. FRRP’s Bleaching Response Plan With projected increases in coral bleaching due to climate change, the FRRP developed a unified plan for responding to coral bleaching events. The Bleaching Response Plan is an operational document implemented during peak bleaching temperatures throughout the summer months, but also designed for response to other reef related events. • Components of the plan: • Early Warning System • NOAA Coral Reef Watch, Bleach Watch and SEAFAN • Impact Assessment • Disturbance Response Monitoring (DRM) • Communications • Summary Report and Press Release • Management Actions

7. Early Warning System The initial onset of mass coral bleaching can vary among different species, geographic locations, types of reef zones and a fluctuation of severity, which makes it very difficult to predict where or when it will occur.  The Florida Keys BleachWatch Program, modeled after Great Barrier Reef’s BleachWatch, is a team of trained recreational, commercial and scientific divers who help monitor and report on conditions at the reefs.  Information from NOAA's Coral Reef Watch (CRW) remote sensing and Integrated Coral Observing Network (ICON) in-situ environmental monitoring analysis are combined with "BleachWatch" volunteer observations in the field to provide a comprehensive overview of "current conditions" throughout the FKNMS. These reports will be generated according to the current conditions and the potential risk for coral bleaching to update and inform monitoring programs. The Florida DEP Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) developed a similar system along the northern portion of the Florida Reef Tract between Miami-Dade and Martin counties. (Southeast Florida Action Network – SEAFAN)

8. 2019 Summer Bleaching Outlook Bleach Watch Reports for June 1-30, 2019 139 Bleach Watch observer reports. Only 9 reports with observations of thermals stress. Green dots = No thermal stress observed Yellow dots = < 10% prevalence of thermal stress

9. 2019 Summer Bleaching Outlook The purpose of these Regional Coral Bleaching Heat Stress Gauges is to provide coral reef ecosystem managers with a comprehensive summary of current satellite-monitored and model-projected bleaching thermal stress conditions to help facilitate timely and effective management actions pertaining to mass coral bleaching. NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch (CRW) provides four gauges per Virtual Station that include the current near-real-time coral bleaching thermal stress alert level and the projected alert level for three consecutive 4-week time periods.

10. What is DRM? The Impact Assessment of the Bleaching Response Plan, was established as the Disturbance Response Monitoring (DRM) effort in 2005 to survey the shallow coral reefs from Martin County to the Dry Tortugas during the months of peak thermal stress. The DRM is enormously valuable in that it is the largest unified monitoring program for the entire Florida Reef Tract and is the largest coordinated coral condition monitoring program in the world!

11. From 2005-2018, over 2,500 DRM sites have been surveyed

12. Disturbance Response Monitoring Surveys designed to monitor coral reef health after a disturbance Trained experts survey corals during peak annual temperatures (typically mid-August through mid-October) • 2005-2016 focused on coral bleaching • 2017 focused on coral disease,hurricane impactsandcoral bleaching. • 2018 and now 2019 will focus on coral disease andcoral bleaching. Post-bleaching Surveys Follow-up surveys are completed after moderate/severe bleaching years (2014 and 2015). If DRM defines the disturbance as severe, post-bleaching monitoring will occur 3-4 months following the event.

13. Communication of Survey Results Each year, a Quick-Look Report is produced based on the survey results. These results inform both reef managers and reef scientists on the health and condition of corals along the Florida Reef Tract. Quick Look Reports from 2011 to 2018 can be downloaded directly from the DRM website on the ‘Surveyor Trainings and Resources’ page. (http://ocean.floridamarine.org/FRRP/Home/About)

14. DRM Data Data collected by the DRM program is widely used in publications and technical reports. Below are only a few examples of how the DRM data is used. These examples highlight the importance of the program in better understanding our Florida reef system. • Species Composition, Habitat, and Water Quality Influence Coral Bleaching in Southern Florida. Daniel Wagner et al. 2010 • Severe 2010 Cold-Water Event Caused Unprecedented Mortality to Corals of the Florida Reef Tract and Reversed Previous Survivorship Patterns. Diego Lirman et al. 2011 • Biotic Homogenization of Coral Assemblages along the Florida Reef Tract. Scott Burman et al. 2012 • Developing Recent Mortality as an Ecosystem Indicator to Enhance Coral Monitoring: A Case Study for Southeast Florida Reefs. Nathan Formel 2013 • Scleractinian Density for Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary from 1999-2012. NOAA NCCOS 2014 • Prediction of coral bleaching in the Florida Keys using remotely sensed data. Brian Barnes et al. 2015 • Recent decade of growth and calcification of Orbicellafaveolata in the Florida Keys: an inshore-offshore comparison. DP Manzello et al. 2015 • Coral reef resilience to climate change in the Florida Reef Tract. James Maynard et al. 2017 • Repeated Thermal Stress, Shading, and Directional Selection in the Florida Reef Tract. Robert van Woesik and Kelly McCaffery 2017

15. DRM Transition and Changes in Protocol 2018 marked the formal transition of the coordination and management of the FRRP Disturbance Response Monitoring (DRM) program to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute (FWRI) Coral Program. The structure of the DRM program remains the same. With the transition, FWRI developed a new website and online data entry system that is accessed through the new website. 2018 served as a pilot year for the data entry system but new updates have been implemented for 2019. We will review the new website and data entry system in an another training to follow. In addition, due to the ongoing coral disease outbreak, modifications to the DRM survey protocol were implemented in 2018. These modifications are intended to better document and describe diseased corals. These changes were made with the guidance of the FRRP Steering Committee and in collaboration with NCRMP and CREMP monitoring programs. The modified protocol will also be thoroughly reviewed in another training to follow.