The Stony Coral Rapid Bioassessment Protocol (RBP) is an inexpensive, no-contact, nontechnical underwater survey procedure designed for jurisdictions with coral monitoring expertise on staff but with limited time and funding. The protocol focuses on scleractinian (stony) reef-building corals because of their fundamental importance to coral reef ecology and ecosystem value. This focus provides vital information for reef assessment but is not intended to limit development of additional measurements that incorporate other components and processes of the reef community. Only three observations are required coral identification, size, and proportion of live tissue all reported for each colony in the sampling transect. These simple underwater observations have been used independently in previous monitoring programs, but when used in combination, they provide a robust array of relevant and informative condition indicators. A unique aspect of the RBP is conversion of colony-size measurements to topographic three-dimensional coral surface area; this augments the number of useful indicators and incorporates both colony and surface area approaches in coral assessment. A clear benefit of the Stony Coral RBP is the number and relevance of coral condition indicators that can be calculated, indicators that represent numerous biological, physical and ecological aspects of stony corals. For regulatory monitoring, the indicators are screened to determine which respond to human disturbances over natural variability this is because the Clean Water Act is intended to protect resources against humaninduced decline, not decline resulting from natural environmental change. Indicator responses can be influenced by a variety of factors unrelated to human disturbance and will vary for different coral communities at different locations. Because not all indicators will be responsive under all conditions, it is an asset to have many useful candidate metrics to screen.

"EPA/600/R-06/167"--Cover. "July 2007"--Cover. Includes bibliographical references (pages 39-50).