Impacts of bottom trawling on a deep-water Oculina coral ecosystem off Florida

In the 1970s, the Oculina reefs were teeming with large spawning aggregations of grouper and snapper. By the early 1990s, commercial and recreational fishing had decimated the fish populations, and the coral had been severely impacted by bottom trawling for rock shrimp. Historical photographic transects, taken in the 1970s with the Johnson-Sea-Link submersibles, provide crucial evidence of the status and health of the reefs prior to heavy fishing and trawling activities. Quantitative analyses of photographic images by point count reveal drastic loss of live coral cover between 1975 and 2001.