167 9 Streamlined Injury Assessment and Restoration Planning in the U.S. National Marine Sanctuaries Lisa C. Symons, Alice Stratton, and William Goodwin CONTENTS 9.1 Introduction...........................................................................................................................168 9.2 Scope and Scale of the Issue ...............................................................................................169 9.3 NOAA���s Coral Assessment and Restoration Experience.....................................................170 9.4 Assessment and Restoration Impediments...........................................................................171 9.5 Injury Types and Injury Assessments ..................................................................................173 9.5.1 Restoration Alternatives and Implementation..........................................................177 9.5.2 Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) Alternatives...............................................................................................................178 9.5.3 Physical Restoration Alternatives.............................................................................179 9.6 Biological Restoration..........................................................................................................180 9.7 Conclusions...........................................................................................................................182 Appendix A: Injury Assessment Protocols....................................................................................182 9.A.1 Injury Location: Vessel Still Aground......................................................................182 9.A.1.1 Georeferencing and Site Marking.............................................................182 9.A.1.2 Vessel���s Direction of Travel and Compass Bearings ...............................183 9.A.1.3 Description of Grounding Incident...........................................................183 9.A.1.4 Plotting on a Navigational Chart..............................................................183 9.A.1.5 Overflights.................................................................................................183 9.A.1.6 Samples/Photographs and Video...............................................................183 9.A.2 Removal of Vessel ....................................................................................................184 9.A.3 Injury Location: Vessel No Longer Aground ..........................................................184 9.A.3.1 dGPS Coordinates, Including the Location of the Grounding Site or the Path the Vessel Traveled .....................................................................184 9.A.3.2 Vessel���s Direction of Travel and Compass Bearings ...............................184 9.A.3.3 Description of Grounding Incident...........................................................185 9.A.3.4 Plotting on a Navigational Chart..............................................................185 9.A.3.5 Search Patterns by Boat............................................................................185 9.A.3.6 Overflight...................................................................................................185 9.A.4 Injury Assessment.....................................................................................................186 9.A.4.1 Types of Possible Injury ...........................................................................186 9.A.4.2 Establish Baseline .....................................................................................186 2073_C009.fm Page 167 Friday, April 7, 2006 4:51 PM �� 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

168 Coral Reef Restoration Handbook 9.A.4.3 Site Characterization.................................................................................187 9.A.4.4 Quantification of Injuries..........................................................................188 9.A.4.5 Qualitative Documentation .......................................................................189 9.A.4.6 Field Note Management............................................................................190 9.A.4.7 Create Photo Mosaic of Injured Area.......................................................190 9.A.4.8 Daily Field Notes......................................................................................190 References ......................................................................................................................................190 9.1 INTRODUCTION Physical impacts to coral reefs occur from pollution, weather, and impacts of human uses and activities such as fishing, marine transportation, and recreation. The National Oceanic and Atmo- spheric Administration (NOAA), as the natural resource trustee, is responsible for responding to and, where appropriate, restoring coral injuries in the National Marine Sanctuary System in order to protect and preserve coral reefs. This chapter describes typical impacts from mechanical injuries, primarily resulting from marine transportation and recreational activities, and outlines NOAA���s efforts to streamline assessment and restoration activities. This chapter will not address pollution, weather, and global warming impacts to corals and coral ecosystems. While significant injury can be caused by extreme climatic (i.e., hurricanes, El Ni��o) or biological (i.e., bleaching and disease) events, these are natural processes that are not appropriate for restoration. Also, spills of oil or other hazardous substances and environmental alterations, such as sedimentation and nutrient enrichment, are not covered by this document. Injuries from spills cause surficial impacts and are addressed through the Oil Pollution Act environmental injuries result from larger alterations in the region and cannot be directly addressed through restoration measures. Mechanical (i.e., physical) injuries to coral reefs caused by direct human intervention include the most visible and common injuries, such as impacts from vessel groundings, anchors and lines, aquaria harvest activities, and fishing gear, but also direct impacts resulting from snorkeling and diving activities, anthropogenic turbidity, and acoustic activities. These injuries occur for a number of reasons. Sometimes the circumstances make their occurrence unavoidable, but more often than not these incidents are attributable to human error. NOAA has dealt with vessel groundings due to navigational errors resulting from having no one at the helm, misdirected autopilots, using incorrect (or no) nautical charts, inexperience, and choosing ���short cuts.��� Bad weather, lack of familiarity with local waters, and inebriation are also often factors. Vessels of all types and sizes can end up where they cause significant environmental harm. Anchoring can also cause damage from the anchor, anchor chain, and cables undercutting, toppling, and crushing coral colonies. Damage of this type is generally due to lack of awareness of how destructive the practice is and to deliberately not adhering to charted ���no anchoring��� prohibitions. Even though protected as a national marine sanctuary, the Florida Keys are severely impacted by both human activities and large-scale ecosystem changes in the Atlantic and Caribbean. Exacerbating this stress by not restoring physical injuries when possible is irresponsible trustee- ship, particularly given the specific legal mandate within the National Marine Sanctuaries Act (NMSA) (16 U.S.C.�� 1441, et seq.). Over the last 20 years, NOAA has developed and refined injury assessment and restoration planning practices for both coral and seagrass habitats. These are constantly refined to address new situations, technologies, and challenges as they arise this chapter summarizes the current status of those efforts for coral. NOAA���s recent efforts to standardize injury assessment methods and to develop a programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) that evaluates and delineates the restoration techniques for varying types of coral injuries are briefly described here. It is hoped that the PEIS, once completed, will facilitate timely restoration planning and implementation. Numerous small- to medium-size groundings occur on a yearly basis in the Florida 2073_C009.fm Page 168 Friday, April 7, 2006 4:51 PM �� 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Streamlined Injury Assessment and Restoration Planning 169 Keys, and in general, restoration times have decreased significantly as NOAA works with cooper- ative responsible parties to immediately implement salvage, emergency triage, and restoration work. Prompt restoration, including the ability to implement emergency restoration, can save significantly more coral tissue and decrease the loss of ecological services. The recent anchoring injury from the MSC Diego in the Tortugas ( �� 1200 m 2 corals scarred, dislodged, toppled, and fractured) is a good example. Reattachment of over 1000 toppled corals was accomplished in a matter of months rather than years due to the cooperation of the responsible party. Because of NOAA���s desire to respond to injuries more quickly and efficiently, the agency has implemented some smaller resto- rations prior to settlement with the responsible party. This requires subsequent billing of the responsible party for the costs of the restoration, as well as the response, injury assessment, compensatory restoration, and monitoring costs. This increase in efficiency and efficacy is critical, especially when an ecosystem is under significant ecological pressure. While NOAA would like to have the fiscal flexibility to do this for all cases, the funds are simply not available for that to occur. 9.2 SCOPE AND SCALE OF THE ISSUE In 1972, Congress passed the Marine Sanctuary Resource Protection Act, later reauthorized as the NMSA. (16 U.S.C.�� 1441, et seq.). This Act directs NOAA to identify, designate, and manage marine protected areas of special national significance. In 2005, there are 13 national marine sanctuaries and one coral reef ecosystem reserve currently in the sanctuary designation process. These include several sites in which the tropical coral reef ecosystems are managed and protected: Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS), Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary (FGBNMS), Fagatele Bay National Marine Sanctuary (FBNMS), and the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve (NWHI CRER).* Of the sites, FKNMS is the most active for vessel groundings, with over 600 reported groundings a year. About 40% of these occur in coral reef substrate or hardground habitats that support coral development. These groundings range in size and type from gouges, small fractures, and abrasions to large-scale crushing injuries. After working through a number of both large- and small-scale restorations and the associated legal environmental planning processes, NOAA has explored options to streamline the review of these requirements for each case. Toward that end, in 2000, NOAA undertook an effort to develop a pair of PEISs in an effort to expedite coral as well as seagrass restoration planning in the national marine sanctuaries. The purpose of a PEIS for coral reef restoration is to use the regulatory planning process under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the NMSA to evaluate ahead of time the range of coral restoration alternatives that can be used in the FKNMS and the FGBNMS. Then, when an incident occurs, restoration plans specific to the incident can be written much more quickly by incorporating the PEIS by reference. It also allows the agency to evaluate new technol- ogies in a more thoughtful and reasoned manner, encompassing current scientific and engineering principles, rather than under pressure to save live coral tissue. While this streamlined planning process requires a significant investment of time and resources upfront. it is expected to decrease restoration planning time and expense considerably over the long run. Without a standard set of assessment methods and protocols, restoration methods, and effective contracting and implementation mechanisms, precious time and live coral tissue are lost after an incident occurs. In addition, the scientific validity of an injury assessment is time sensitive and must be done as soon after the injury as possible. An injury assessment done 12 to 14 months after an incident is not descriptive of the original injury and may not be as defensible in litigation. Likewise, restoration plans developed 12 to 14 months after the assessment may not adequately address the existing injuries. The NMSA is very clear in its expectations of NOAA as a responsible resource trustee. Under Section 312 of the NMSA, NOAA is specifically directed to undertake restoration of injured * This chapter does not address impacts to more temperate deepwater corals. 2073_C009.fm Page 169 Friday, April 7, 2006 4:51 PM �� 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

170 Coral Reef Restoration Handbook sanctuary resources. Section 312 directs NOAA to seek damages from the responsible parties that injured sanctuary resources and use the recovered funds to recoup emergency response, damage assessment, restoration, and monitoring costs.* Restoration planning undertaken under the ��312 authority and funded from those Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) funds must be done in accordance with a range of legal requirements, including the NEPA, the NMSA, and any relevant state statutes if restoration activities are to take place in state waters. This often makes restoration planning and engineering on a large scale difficult to accomplish quickly. Environmental planning processes, developed to ensure appropriate consideration of all options, take time and often leave resource trustees with great plans but no remaining live coral tissue to restore and/or an injury that is significantly larger than the one originally designed to be addressed. Once a restoration plan is developed, federal procurement and permitting requirements can also cause additional delays. The goal of an NRDA is to assess the extent of the injury, recover response and damage assessment costs, and implement primary and compensatory restoration to make the environment and public whole as a result of the injury. ���Primary restoration��� refers to restoration activities at the actual injury site. The goal of restoration activities is to return injured coral communities to preinjury conditions. For coral reef communities, ���baseline��� refers to the level of ecological services (type, quality, and coverage of coral) existing prior to the incident. Baseline conditions are typically measured via field assessment techniques in the undisturbed reef communities bordering the grounding site. 1 In many circumstances, without primary restoration, the injured reef communities are subject to redisturbance by storms that could slow recovery and/or expand the size of the injury. ���Compensatory restoration��� refers to a restoration project, typically offsite, that compensates the public for the lost interim ecological services as a result of the time it takes for the original ���primary��� injury (with or without primary restoration) to return to baseline conditions. Funds collected for small compensatory resto- ration projects may be pooled together for the implementation of a larger compensatory restoration project. Funds are also collected to cover emergency response and monitoring costs. The monitoring costs generally will cover both the primary and compensatory restoration actions. 9.3 NOAA���S CORAL ASSESSMENT AND RESTORATION EXPERIENCE The first element of assessment is response. Having standardized response objectives is critical. This section describes response in terms of three factors: minimizing impact, gathering information, and the continuum between response and injury assessment. Very little time is available during an incident to consider a broad range of response options and procedures. If appropriate decisions are not made during the removal of a vessel and during the collection of data both prior to and after removal, significant additional injuries can occur and information critical to the development of a legal case are lost. For instance, salvage efforts will often incur the least additional damage if the vessel can be removed along the entry path. That is not always possible, so specific efforts have to be made to find the next-least-injurious route. In addition, when the vessel is on the reef, measurements need to be taken to understand the original footprint and outline of the injury so it can later be determined how the footprint may have changed during the vessel removal process. This is especially important if a vessel remains in situ for several days, continuing to impact resources. These activities are critical for implementing an effective response, as well as for working up an accurate injury assessment. If injury assessments are not done immediately during and after a grounding incident, the information gained may not be not accurate or reflective of the injury at hand but may be reflective of other confounding elements. These could include additional injury incidents in the same place, * Under the NMSA, the damages are defined to include: (1) the costs to restore, replace, or acquire the equivalent of the resources injured (2) the value of the lost use of the resources pending restoration (3) the costs of assessing the injuries to those resources (4) the cost of monitoring the restoration (5) the costs of enforcement. 16 U.S.C. �� 1443 (a). 2073_C009.fm Page 170 Friday, April 7, 2006 4:51 PM �� 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Streamlined Injury Assessment and Restoration Planning 171 disturbance of the site by weather events, algal colonization of injury surfaces, or recruitment of other benthic organisms not representative of the baseline conditions. Of course, sound judgment and common sense must be exercised by the assessment personnel so as not to jeopardize their safety or the safety of other response team members. Heavy seas, thunderstorms, fuel spills, and other hazardous situations or conditions may delay the assessment process in deference to safety concerns. However, assessment activities should commence as soon as it is safely possible to carry them out. Without the ability to reliably return to an injury site, it is difficult to prove injury. Locational accuracy is also critical for the accurate description of the areal extent of an injury and to differ- entiate one injury from another and distinguish the injured area from the unimpacted reef. It also facilitates comprehensive restoration planning and restoration monitoring. This is particularly important in high-traffic areas (���hot spots���) that have sustained multiple injuries. Differential geographic position system, or dGPS, is the current state of the art in defining location and should be used by both law enforcement and injury assessment personnel. Personnel must be appropriately trained in the recognition of corals and other benthic species endemic to the injury area. In addition, they must be trained to ���read��� an injury once the vessel is no longer on site. It is important to understand how the injuries occurred, as that can determine what type of injuries are found and where they may be found. An injury assessment should be conducted in a manner that will support litigation and the necessary standards of proof. Accordingly, assessment methods must be generally accepted and replicable they must provide the necessary information to develop an accurate injury assessment and to develop appropriate restoration plans. While it may be necessary to update an assessment if a long period has lapsed between the injury and the restoration, the initial assessment should be done as soon as possible following an injury. Chapter 8 discusses legal authorities around the world. Careful review of more complex restoration plans is especially critical. In some instances, methods and materials have not performed as expected. In the Contship Houston grounding, the responsible party quickly undertook the restoration. That restoration specifically facilitated the use of some new techniques, some of which have not held up well over time. Funds set aside for monitoring have been used twice to fund midcourse corrections, and NOAA is considering whether additional corrective action is necessary or appropriate. The length of time necessary to implement some restorations left injuries, at some sites, vulnerable to additional impacts, from new groundings and from weather. Hurricane Georges increased the depth and areal extent of the R/V Columbus Iselin site by nearly 100%, 2 and NOAA estimates that 75% of the area restored at the M/V Wellwood site was injured postgrounding. 3 Restoration delays can be caused by something as simple as a graduated settlement structure, which may not convey enough funds to cover restoration costs until several years after settlement. The federal procurement process is also difficult to synchronize with a limited field season. Weather delays significantly impact costs and can only be estimated at the time of settlement. User communities can be suspicious and even resentful when popular dive areas have restricted access during construction. Some have been known to take malicious action toward contractors during restoration activities. Taking the time to reach out to this community is critical, as these users generally become strong advocates once educated. 9.4 ASSESSMENT AND RESTORATION IMPEDIMENTS Throughout coral management agencies and authorities, a number of common impediments prevent appropriate and prompt ecosystem restoration. These include untrained personnel, lack of necessary equipment, and the lack of standardized techniques. Many smaller resource management agencies do not have personnel specifically dedicated to damage assessment or restoration activities. Thus when incidents occur, untrained personnel are 2073_C009.fm Page 171 Friday, April 7, 2006 4:51 PM �� 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC