Occurrence of deep-water Lophelia pertusa and Madrepora oculata in the Gulf of Mexico

One of the critical information needs identified at the 2003 Deep-Sea Corals Workshop in Galway, Ireland, was to locate and chart deep-sea corals in order to develop reliable estimates of their distribution and abundance. While reports of deep-sea corals from the Gulf of Mexico date back to the 1860s, relatively little is known about their distribution or abundance. This paper attempts to provide a current assessment of the occurrence of Lophelia pertusa and Madrepora oculata in water depths greater than 200 m in the Gulf of Mexico by summarizing records from (1) published material, (2) the 2003 National Museum of Natural History Taxonomic Database, (3) findings obtained during the September-October 2003 NOAA-OE RV Ronald H. Brown cruise RB-03-07-leg-2 in the northern Gulf, and (4) from various unpublished sources.