It is easy to take for granted the abundance of these little creatures, when most of us focus our attention on the brightly colored fish and corals sharing this habitat. Two separate scientific projects are currently underway in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary to document and identify the types and numbers of bottom organisms living in our marine waters.
Macrobenthic organisms are small animals without a backbone which live on or in bottom habitats.
They exhibit a variety of body shapes, feeding styles, and reproductive modes, and comprise a critical link in the marine food web. Most of these benthic dwellers are stationary or attached, leading to their inability to move away from natural and human-caused environmental stresses such as temperature and salinity changes, pollution, and nutrient loading. Therefore, knowing the distribution and abundance of macrobenthic animals may indicate to scientists the relative health of an area. These organisms may also attest to the success of certain management actions if their populations change inside the Sanctuary's no-take areas, for example. A project under the direction of Dr. Bernie Gottholm, of NOAA's Office of Ocean Resources Conservation and Assessment, has been conducting surveys in Florida Bay and the Florida Keys for five years to gather baseline data on macrobenthic organisms.