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Coral bleaching variability during the 2017 global bleaching event on a remote, uninhabited island in the western Pacific: Farallon de Medinilla, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands

—A survey conducted in Fall 2017 by US Navy scientists around the small, uninhabited island of Farallon de Medinilla (FDM) documented severe bleaching related to extended regional heat stress. Three of the dominant scleractinian genera at FDM, Pocillopora, Leptastrea, and Astreopora, were severely impacted, with more than 90% of colonies from many species exhibiting bleaching. In contrast, several species of Porites corals, another dominant genus at FDM, fared better, with less bleaching (7%–68% by species) than the island average (78%). Bleaching was somewhat higher at shallower depths (<10 m depth stratum, compared to 10–20 m depth stratum) and on the leeward of the island. Surveying FDM presented logistical challenges including a compressed time window for survey execution, periods of strong currents >1 knot that precluded diving, rare but potentially hazardous ordnance items, survey requirements for georeferenced imagery and quantitative data collection. The survey protocol designed to accommodate these challenges is presented here, as are lessons from an unsuccessful attempt to delineate bleached coral colonies in photographs using automated object-based image analysis. Scleractinian (hard) corals contain symbiotic dinoflagellate algae of the genus Symbiodinium, which supply the majority of energy required by most host corals for metabolism, growth, calcification, and reproduction (Roth 2014). This symbiotic relationship drives the relatively high productivity of coral ecosystems in oligotrophic portions of the oceans, although corals also feed heterotrophically to different extents, which vary across time and space (Houlbrèque and Ferrier-Pagès 2009). Despite its importance, the coral-Symbiodinium symbiosis is tenuous and can be disturbed by a range of stressors, leading corals to expel their symbionts and become “bleached” (e.g., Brown 1997). Bleached corals can die from starvation (Anthony et 1 Energy and Environmental Sciences, Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, 53475 Strothe Rd, San Diego, California