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The WCMC/NMFS Global Coral Disease Database Andrew W. Bruckner NOAA/National Marine Fisheries Service, Office of Protected
Resources, 1315 East West Highway, Silver Spring, MD 20910 Coral
diseases are assumed to have increased in frequency and distribution during the
last decade, and they appear to be spreading to new regions faster than ever
recorded in the past. Like other
emerging diseases, some coral diseases represent new types of pathologies,
others have reappeared in a more virulent form, and still others are undergoing
redistribution and expansion of their range. Tracking and mapping these events
is essential to understanding conditions that may exacerbate the occurrence of coral
diseases and global trends in coral reef health. The relationship between human activities and the incidence of
coral disease is a particularly important component of research into causes and
solutions, since outbreaks of coral diseases and associated mass mortalities
may be harbingers signaling a decline in coral reef ecosystem health. As an initial step to track the
distribution of coral diseases, the World Conservation Monitoring Centre
(WCMC), in collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), created the first
global coral disease database. This database compiles published accounts of
coral disease onto GIS-based coral reef maps, and includes information on the
range of species affected and the geographical distribution, incidence and
mortality for each disease. Diseases have been observed on 102 different coral
species spanning 54 nations in the western Atlantic, the Red Sea and the
Indo-Pacific, with a disproportionate number of records (66%) from the wider
Caribbean region. A total of 29
differently named diseases have been reported.
However, in some instances there is a disagreement as to whether an
observed condition is a disease; this list includes various names given to the
same disease sign, syndromes that are referred to as a disease but are caused
by other factors such as fish bites, and conditions that have only recently
been recognized on coral reefs but are poorly understood. Coral diseases that have been most thoroughly
studied include black-band disease, white-band disease, white plague and
Aspergillosis; together, these account for over 80% of the 2076 records
contained in the database. The database can be accessed online at:
www.wcmc.org.uk/marine/coraldis, and includes photographs and descriptions of
various coral diseases as well as data entry forms for researchers to report
unpublished data. In addition to regular updates, including the inclusion of
unpublished reports, efforts are underway to overlay major anthropogenic
threats onto the coral disease distributional maps.
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