Toward Longitudinal Reef Health Monitoring in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary using Iver AUVs

In 1990 the U. S. Congress established Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS) to address concerns over protection of the natural environment in and around the waters of the Florida Keys. Along with establishing the sanctuary, a comprehensive management plan was authored to include science, outreach, resource protection, and administration activities in support of the sanctuary. As part of the continued efforts to conduct marine science leading to sanctuary resource protection, Office of National Marine Sanctuaries (ONMS) partnered with L3 OceanServer and Xylem-YSI-ISS to devise and conduct a longitudinal optical and acoustic survey of targeted areas within FKNMS. The primary mission of the survey is to monitor changes within the sanctuary in an effort to better understand threats and associated protection methods, while simultaneously fostering technology development for large-scale in situ environmental monitoring. This paper introduces the Longitudinal Optical and Acoustic Resource Survey (LOARS) within FKNMS and discusses the optical and acoustic technologies used to conduct the survey. In addition, results of the initial trial survey conducted November 19th and 20th, 2018 are discussed along with modifications to the concept of operations (CONOPs) based on lessons-learned during the initial trial survey.