Abstract

Investigating wildlife diseases can pose challenges under the best of circumstances. Detecting mortality events, access to samples, lack of adequate laboratory reagents to investigate diseases, and permit issues are all familiar hurdles faced by wildlife professionals as they strive to understand the impacts that infectious and non-infectious agents pose to wildlife populations. That said, investigators of diseases in terrestrial animals, seabirds, and marine mammals can draw upon a rich and burgeoning literature on methods and documentations of past mortality events. Detectability is less of an issue when charismatic megafauna such as whales, dolphins, or large numbers of seabirds die, particularly near urbanized areas. Finally, loss of entire species while tragic will seldom result in ecosystem collapse. This situation contrasts with coral reefs. Corals are animals that, as ecosystem engineers, provide the foundation of all tropical coral reef systems. Many are in highly remote locations thus posing significant logistical challenges to their study. Investigating mortalities in coral reefs and associated organisms is difficult because they are seldom reported, decomposition after death occurs rapidly in warm humid climates, and observations of phenomena are often limited by air consumption and limited time in the habitat. Little to no baseline data exists on causes of death in corals or associated organisms, and the existing literature is rife with confusion and misinformation because of absence of standardized biomedical approaches to coral disease investigations. We outline here approaches being used to establish baseline health data on coral reefs in the Pacific where a majority of coral reef resources under US jurisdiction are located and describe the events involving a response to an unusual morality event in corals in North Kauai, Hawaii, in 2012.