Bottom Photographs from the Pulley Ridge Deep Coral Reef

USGS Open-File Report 2004-1228

by
VeeAnn A. Cross, Dann S. Blackwood, Robert B. Halley, and David C. Twichell

INTRODUCTION:

Pulley Ridge is a series of drowned barrier islands that extend over 100 km in 60-100 m
water depths. This drowned ridge is located on the Florida Platform in the southeastern
Gulf of Mexico about 250 km west of Cape Sable, Florida (Halley and others, 2003). This
barrier island chain formed during the initial stage of the Holocene marine transgression.
These islands were then submerged and left abandoned near the outer edge of the Florida
Platform. The southern portion of Pulley Ridge, the focus of this study, hosts
zooxanthellate scleractinian corals, green, red and brown macro algae, and a mix of deep
and typically shallow-water tropical fishes.

Several factors help to account for the existence of this unique deep-water community.
First, the underlying drowned barrier island provides both elevated topography and
lithified substrate for the establishment of the hardbottom community. Second, the region
is dominated by the west edge of the Loop Current, which brings relatively clear and warm
water to this area. Third, the ridge's position on the continental shelf places it within
the thermocline which provides nutrients to the reef during upwelling (Halley and others,
2003).

This report presents the still photographs acquired during the April 2003 cruise aboard
the Florida Institute of Oceanography's research vessel Suncoaster. These data are just
one part of a multi-year study which includes the acquisition of sidescan-sonar imagery,
high-resolution bathymetry, high-resolution seismic-reflection profiles, bottom video
imagery, and bottom samples.

DISC CONTENTS:
Top level directory:

index.htm - This file is intended to be the starting point for the DVD-ROM access. It is
written in the Hypertext Markup Language utilized by the World Wide Web (WWW) project and
must be opened with a WWW browser. Once opened, the user may browse the DVD-ROM's contents
as they would pages from the WWW.

readme.txt - ASCII text file containing a description of this DVD-ROM. This file may be
viewed or printed with any system program capable of opening ASCII text files.

pulley.apr - ArcView project file created with ArcView 3.2a on a Windows2000 computer.

Directories:

Directory data - What follows is a brief description of the data contained in the
underlying directories. This directory contains the following subdirectories:

	gis - contains the files appropriate for use in a GIS. This includes color shaded-
	relief georeferenced TIFF images of the study area, a portion of U.S. state
	boundaries for location reference, and shapefiles pertaining to the navigation
	associated with the SeaBOSS system.
	seaboss - contains numerous subdirectories based on CD number (i.e. cd2444) which
	contains JPEG images of digitized bottom photographs acquired by SeaBOSS. This
	folder also contains a PDF version of the log book maintained during data
	acquisition.

Directory htmldocs: contains the HTML pages accessed within this report. This directory
contains the subdirectory icons which contains all the image files and icons utilized in
constructing the report HTML pages.

Directory metadata: contains the HTML and ASCII text versions of the metadata files for
all the data contained in this report. This metadata is organized into the following
subdirectories: gis, seaboss.

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warranty, and no responsibility is assumed by the USGS in the use of this data, software, 
or related materials.

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