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Description:"Current velocity measurements collected on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ship surveys of the US Virgin Islands (USVI) and Puerto Rico (PR) coastal ocean agree with drifter and model data suggesting strong linkages between MPAs south of St. Thomas and near-shore areas east of PR and north of St. Thomas. These regions are connected by Vieques Sound and Virgin Passage. In 2010, NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) funded NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) to moor instrumentation across these waters to assess biological connectivity over the USVI and PR shelf in support of adaptive management. Sustainable fisheries require effective resource management. Proective measures must address overfishing and habitat protection, and they must be appropriately targeted. There is general agreement that assessment of the effectiveness of exIsting USVI and PR MPA management actions should be evaluated based upon analysis of biophysical data collected from the region, and that in order to develop improved adaptive management strategies for the future, a more comprehensive understanding of relevant larval recruitment pathways and region-wide habitat connectivity is required. These needs, have previously been articulated in USVI Coral Reef Management Priority Setting Process Objectives 4.12, MR15, and national objectives F1.1, F1.3, F1.6, F2.4, F2.5, and I1.5, building upon collaborative work in the region, AOML and the Southeast Fisheries Science Center (SEFSC) seek to quantify ichthyoplankton flux across the PR and USVI shelf, , from known regional spawning aggregation sites to other near-shore habitats, through the collection of moored time-series data and model implementation. Here we present the model results as a comparison with the observed flow measured during occupation of Vieques Sound and Virgin Passage sections (Figure 1). This modeling work was also funded by CRCP"--Introduction.
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CoRIS Project ID:CRCP Project ID ; 20689
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