In Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary region within the northwestern Gulf of Mexico, sponges thrive among diverse biological and geological habitats between 16–200+ m deep (i.e., coral reefs and communities, algal nodules, and coralline algae reefs, mesophotic reefs, patch reefs, scarps, ridges, soft substrate, and rocky outcrops).

Over a century of study in American Samoa has built a foundation of coral reef ecology within the region. However, this work has been restricted to shallow coral reefs (SCRs; <30 m) until recently, where a few studies have started describing American Samoa’s mesophotic coral ecosystems (MCEs). MCEs are defined as coral reef communities with zooxanthellate corals and associated biotic assemblages between 30 and 150 m depth. Mapping efforts within the territory have documented habitat characteristics for SCRs, as well as MCEs.

Over a 3-year period, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) organized and implemented a Pacific-wide field campaign entitled CAPSTONE: Campaign to Address Pacific monument Science, Technology, and Ocean NEeds. Under the auspices of CAPSTONE, NOAA mapped 597,230 km² of the Pacific seafloor (with ∼61% of mapped area located within US waters), including 323 seamounts, conducted 187 ROV dives totaling 891.5 h of ROV benthic imaging time, and documented >347,000 individual organisms.

A review of taxonomic and ecological studies for shallow and mesophotic antipatharians is presented for four regionally based case studies, three in the tropics (1) Central Indo-Pacific, plus adjacent sections of the Western Indo-Pacific, (2) Eastern Indo-Pacific (primarily Hawaiʻi), and (3) the Caribbean Sea) and one at temperate latitudes in the Mediterranean Sea and adjacent sections of the Northeast Atlantic. 

NOAA’s Office of Habitat Conservation (OHC) in the National Marine Fisheries Service is participating in an Open Ocean Trustee Implementation Group studying marine life in the Gulf of Mexico and the impact of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill on that life. The NOAA Central Library was consulted to create this annotated bibliography to provide OHC with literature on the mesophotic and deep sea corals in the Gulf of Mexico. In particular this bibliography covers the impacts of the DWH oil spill, mapping and restoration techniques for those coral communities.