National Coral Reef Monitoring Program: Assessing and monitoring cryptic reef diversity of colonizing marine invertebrates using autonomous reef monitoring structures (ARMS) deployed at coral reef sites across the Mariana Archipelago

At these sites, divers entered the water and deployed and/or recovered the ARMS unit. Each unit used to gather this data consists of 23 cm x 23 cm gray, type 1 PVC plates stacked in alternating series of 4 open and 4 obstructed layers and attached to a base plate of 35 cm x 45 cm which is affixed to the reef. They are designed to mimic the structural complexity of a reef and attract colonizing invertebrates.

Please see the data to determine how long a particular unit was underwater as soak times can vary by location. Upon recovery, each ARMS unit was encapsulated, brought to the surface, and disassembled and processed on-board the research ship. Disassembled plates were photographed to document recruited sessile organisms and scraped clean and preserved in 95% ethanol for future DNA processing.

Recruited motile organisms were then sieved into 3 size fractions: 2 mm, 500 um, and 100 um. The 500 um and 100 um fraction was bulked and preserved in 95% ethanol for future DNA processing. The 2 mm fraction was sorted into morphospecies.

These DNA sequencing data are not included in this collection.