The fish fauna associated with deep coral banks off the southeastern United States

Deep-sea or cold-water corals form substantial habitat along many continental slopes, including the southeastern United States (SEUS). Despite increasing research on deep coral systems and growing appreciation of their importance to fishes, quantitative data on fish communities occupying these ecosystems are relatively lacking. Our overall goals were to document the fish species and their relative abundances and to describe the degree of general habitat specificity of the fishes on and around deep coral habitats on the SEUS slope. From 2000 to 2006, we used the Johnson-Sea-Link (JSL) submersible (65 dives, 366–783 m), supplemented with otter trawls (33 tows, 365–910 m) to document fishes and habitats from off North Carolina to east-central Florida. Eight areas with high concentrations of deep-sea corals were surveyed repeatedly. Three general habitat types (prime reef, transition reef, and off reef) were defined to determine large-scale habitat use patterns. Throughout the area, at least 99 fish species were identified, many (19%) of which yielded new distributional data. Most species observed with the JSL were on prime reef (n=50) and transition reef (n=42) habitats, but the off reef habitat supported a well developed, but different fauna (n=25 species). Prime reef was characterized by Laemonema melanurum (21% of total), Nezumia sclerorhynchus (17% of total), Beryx decadactylus (14% of total), and Helicolenus dactylopterus (10% of total). The off reef areas were dominated by Fenestraja plutonia (19% of total), Laemonema barbatulum (18% of total), Myxine glutinosa (8% of total), and Chlorophthalmus agassizi (7% of total). Transition habitat exhibited a mixture of species that were also found on either prime reef or off reef habitats. Nezumia sclerorhynchus was the most abundant (25% of total) transition habitat species, followed by L. barbatulum (16% of total) and L. melanurum (14% of total). Several species (e.g., Anthias woodsi, B. decadactylus, Conger oceanicus, and Dysommina rugosa) demonstrated specificity to deep-reef habitats, while others (e.g., C. agassizi, Benthobatis marcida, F. plutonia, and Phycis chesteri) were always more common away from reefs. In addition to new distributional data, we provide behavioral and biological observations for dominant species.