Monitoring Programs of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico: Inventory, development and use of a large monitoring database to map fish and invertebrate spatial distributions

This paper is an inventory of fish and invertebrate monitoring programs in the US Gulf of Mexico, including the REEF Volunteer Fish Survey Project, which has been active in the region since 1994. The authors conducted a gap analysis of the programs, and provided recommendations for improving current monitoring programs and designing new programs, and guidance for more comprehensive use and sharing of monitoring data. They also compiled a large monitoring database encompassing much of the monitoring data collected in the region using random sampling schemes and employed this database to fit statistical models to then map the spatial distributions of 61 fish and invertebrate functional groups, species and life stages. The study included 73 monitoring programs in the region. This study was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) RESTORE Act Science Program.