ties. He was referring primarily to estimating percentage cover, 

 counts of species and genera and related problems. There is 

 virtually no information on standing stocks of cell material, even in 

 major organic elements. Our objective was to explore some of the 

 difficulties, both field and laboratory, to be faced in gathering this 

 type of information and to provide guiding data for studies of producti- 

 vity. 



EQUIPMENT AKD PROCEDURE 



After becoming familiar with the Lameshur Bay reef, an 80 m transect 

 was marked with light nylon line running east and west from a depth of 

 approximately 10 m to 20 m, in a typical area some I50 m south of the 

 habitat position. The gross profile of the transect was established 

 at 3 m intervals with wrist depth gauges and a marked reel line. At 

 intervals of 6 m, 35 mh color photos were taken in plan for later 

 reference in making qualitative observations and biomass estimates. At 

 the same intervals, samples were taken within Im^ quadrats and notes taken 

 on features such as percent cover by coral, sponges, sediment, bare rock 

 and algae, as well as diversity of the sessile fauna and flora. In areas 

 of sediments, samples were taken by coring the surface layers. Portions 

 of the most abundant hard corals in each quadrat as well as the least 

 common were taken by hammer and chisel. Soft corals were measured for 

 height and total length of all branches or for area, in the case of 

 "fans", and representative portions taken for analysis. Individual 

 whole algal thalli were collected. All samples were placed in plastic 

 bags and "frozen in the habitat until the mission was completed when 

 transfer to cold boxes was arranged for immediate return to Miami. 



Several more or less arbitrary decisions were necessary in preparing 

 samples for chemical analysis. Lacking support for an extensive explora- 

 tion of organic constituents, it was necessary to limit attention to 

 determinations of organic carbon and nitrogen. In the case of hard 

 corals, the size of the originally living surface was determined for each 

 sample; in massive forms the calcareous understructure was cut away with 

 a band saw leaving a surface layer for analysis. All samples were dried 

 overnight in an oven at 70°C, weighed, and then pulverized by hand in a 

 dead-end steel tube fitted with a solid steel piston. Crushing was 

 continued until each sample could be passed through a 0. 5 ram sieve. Small 

 replicate aliquots of these materials were used for chemical analysis. 



Organic carbon was determined with the method of Strickland and Parsons 

 (1965) while, for nitrogen, the procedure of Holm-Hansen (1968) was 

 followed . 



RESULTS 



The analysis of all the collected samples is well advanced but not yet 

 complete so that we axe unable to provide this part of our report. Under 

 the circumstances, it will be necessary to publish this sector of the work 

 independently . 



VI-255 



