NOAA - Pulaski Shoal, Dry Tortugas

Setting

Pulaski Shoal sits near the northeastern boundary of Dry Tortugas National Park (24.69 N, 82.77 W) and has served as a long-term USGS and NOAA monitoring location for reef habitat mapping and for tracking the threatened staghorn coral, Acropora cervicornis. It is one of the four NOAA NCRMP climate-monitoring stations in the Dry Tortugas serviced on the AOML climate-monitoring leg of 24-29 June 2021, when its shallow (about 1 m) temperature recorder was recovered and redeployed; the station was not dived or photographed by Anderson.

General benthic features

Habitats around Pulaski include coral rubble, carbonate sand, seagrass, and remnant reef structure.

Stressors

Published USGS work documents severe heat stress and loss of elkhorn coral, Acropora palmata, across the Dry Tortugas in the 2023 marine heatwave — two years after that leg, and regional rather than specific to this site.

Comparisons with other data

The nearest independent measurement is a NOAA NCRMP benthic assessment station 0.58 km away — PSU 1570 station 1, classified as contiguous reef, non-spur-and-groove, moderate vertical relief — which recorded no stony coral (fire coral, Millepora, 1%) when NOAA surveyed it on 20 September 2021, about three months after that leg. It is a different program's transect, but at 580 m and in the same year it is the closest thing to a contemporaneous figure for this shoal. The newest NOAA NCRMP record within 5 km, from 11 September 2024, is at PSU 2356-1, 1.35 km away, and recorded 20%; the 11 NCRMP records from 2024 within 5 km average 3.9%, and the 12 NCRMP stations surveyed within 5 km on 19 and 20 September 2021 average 2.8%.

No underwater photographs from this site are on file.