Recovery of fish assemble ages from ship groundings on coral reefs in the Florida keys national marine sanctuary

摘要

At three areas in the FKNMS where ships ran aground between 1984 and 1989, microtopographic complexity was eliminated in the areas of impact as etocorallians and corals were killed, toppled, and smashed. Remediation was attempted; hard and soft cor- als were transplanted to part of one impact area shortly after the accident, debris was removed from part of another, and the substrate was repaired with cast concrete forms at the third area. Few fishes are found immediately after such impacts, but fishes should return to impacted sites along with other life, recovering to resemble either assemblages characteristics of complex reefs, or assemblages of simpler hard ground habitat.