Coral tissue mortality as a function of the presence or absence of sea cucumbers and coral outplant type in cage experiments in lagoonal habitat of Mo’orea, French Polynesia in April and May of 2020

Abstract

Coral reefs are in global decline with coral diseases playing a significant role. Coral diseases are commonly sediment-associated and could be exacerbated by overharvest of sediment-feeding sea cucumbers. These data include visual assessments of coral (Acropora pulchra) tissue mortality among corals outplanted in 50 x 50 cm cages in sandy lagoonal areas of Mo’orea, French Polynesia (17.4894° S, 149.8825° W). Zero, one, or two Holothuria atra sea cucumbers were placed into each cage, as well as three treatments of the coral Acropora pulchra (n = 12 cages/treatment): (i) a coral branch with turf algae on the base separating live coral tissue from sediment by ~2.5 cm of turf (hereafter “turf”), ii) a coral with equivalent turf algae on its base but with the turf buried so that sediment contacted the coral’s live tissue at the turf-coral juncture (hereafter “buried turf”), or iii) a coral lacking turf on its base and its live tissue in direct contact with benthic sediment (hereafter “no turf”). Percent tissue mortality of each A. pulchra coral was monitored daily for 36 days (April-May 2020) or until tissue mortality of one more corals within a cage was estimated to be ≥50% of the coral’s branch height, after which all corals in that cage were collected for sampling and subsequent microbiome analyses. All coral tissue mortality data were collected by Dr. Cody Clements of the Georgia Institute of Technology.

For a complete list of measurements, refer to the full dataset description in the supplemental file 'Dataset_description.pdf'. The most current version of this dataset is available at: https://www.bco-dmo.org/dataset/920209