St. John Reef Reports

14/01/2026

Mass Die-Offs of the long spined black urchin (Diadema antillarum) have been confirmed at Flat Cay, Range Cay, and Fortuna Bay areas of St. Thomas....and is spreading as of today 01/14/2026....it will likely get to St John fast- in a few weeks or so if its anything like 2022. Please keep your eyes peeled and report any die-off observations- ideally with photos- to the link below please! We want to track its progression around the USVI, and your repots help us with that.
https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/7879b018f20f4602ad82c24c4e0d1e98

13/01/2026

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONEI
SCTLD treatment work within NPS waters of STJ, by UVI's treatment team, is now halted. This page will remain active, and occasionally we will share posts and news about other research within STJ NPS waters.

Diadema urchins are dying at Flat Cay STT......STT and STJ folks let us know if you see the black spined urchins showing signs of recent tissue loss, spines dropping, or rolling on the benthos. Observations should also be reported with this link below
https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/7879b018f20f4602ad82c24c4e0d1e98

Right now, it is time to stay vigilant. As waters cool disease tends to come out of the woodworks.....if you see something say something. Even better, take a picture or two and report any strange coral issue using this link below https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/9838819b5e1748448297255f6fd1a183

A form to collect data on coral health in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and whoever else wants to use this form.

09/12/2025

THIS IS OUR LAST WEEK OF SCTLD TREATMENTS WITHIN NPS WATERS.

This week we will dive Turner Point, Johnson's Reef, and Possibly Cinnamon Bay's outer reef. Here are some of our recent images from our field days in November. Thank you to all our volunteer divers- without you this project would not have been as impactful or successful.

During the past four years we have performed over 1000 surveys for SCTLD across 25+reef systems around St. John, treated over 8000 corals for SCTLD, monitored hundreds of tagged corals time and time again to determine treatment success and tracked coral mortality in relation to bleaching, have culled dozens of lionfish, collected marine debris, rescued folks from a burning boat, kept eyes out for novel invasive species, mapped rare coral species, collected rare corals for live gene-banking at UVI's land-based nursery, towed a dead whale back to UVI for necropsy, taught students and citizen scientists about diseases and how we treat stony coral tissue loss disease, have responded to the mass mortality event of 2022 that killed off most of the Diadema urchins locally and ended up with 5 publications that include pathogen ID and more, and have engaged with hundreds of people here and through our outreach events over the years. Further, our staff have excelled personally with two of our staff entering graduate school for marine science at UVI, and an additional staff now works for DPNR Territorial Parks!!!! We have done and continue to do great things for the territory 😊 And to all of you, thank you for loving the ocean, and for following our journey to steward the reefs.

Shameless plug: We hope to bring you news of unexpected significant donations that will continue this work in the new year...but as of today we are waiting on a secret Santa. If you or someone you know wants to be our secret (or not so secret) Santa, please follow the links below for info on Reef Response, donation options, and contact us for more information. Happy Holidays!!!!
https://www.reefresponse.org/

https://www.reefresponse.org/contact

https://www.reefresponse.org/make-a-donation-1

04/11/2025

Natural recruitment on Wind Spirit Reef Includes a lot of Eusmilia fastigiata (right- rose bunch looking) and Meandrina meandrites (left- zipper looking) corals, as can be seen in the first image here. The reef itself seems to be crumbling and losing rugosity and coral cover... but even so, at least for now, there are some pretty nifty inverts and fish that call this low coral cover reef their home.

May, one of our newest volunteers, and a first-year graduate student in the MMES program at UVI, can be found about halfway through the pics. Thank you May for being such a great dive buddy and helping us monitor and treat corals with signs of disease!

Wind Spirit Reef is located in North STJ waters, to the east of Johnson's Reef and between Cinnamon Bay and Whistling Cay. It is in a high traffic boating area, and we do not recomend atempting to visit this reef for recreation.

06/10/2025

It is good to look up from SCTLD treatments, you never know what might come gliding by. 09/12/2025 at Mardenboro Point.

06/10/2025

On 07.02.2025 we tagged Orbicella annularis (OANN) corals with signs of SCTLD at Mardenbor Point. We tried to re-evaluate these tagged colonies on 09/12/2025... However, due to sinus issues we were not able to safely do the work. We returned on 09/16/2025 and were abe to refind some of the tagged colonies. It appears we are still able to ID and treat SCTLD correctly. The treatments are working on the OANN as they should be!!! We will return to find the remaining taged colonies this Friday, October 10th 2025 and continue with treating all corals with signs of SCTLD.

11/09/2025

Tomorrow the SCTLD treatment team returns to Mardenboro Point to re-evaluate our tagged corals for treatment success and treat any corals with signs of SCTLD.

On 07/02/2025, our last visit, we tagged 12 new coral colonies that had recent tissue loss (mostly OANN). Because these lesions appear similar to those of corals with the seperate disease called White Plague, we really wanted to see if our treatment would be effective (we think we are still IDing SCTLD correctly). We will let you know if the treatment worked at stopping the tissue loss after we find the colonies tomorrow. Check back mid next week for an update.

03/09/2025

Have a fantastic day everyone!

28/08/2025

We love tracking the fate of understudied and uncommon coral species. Unfortunately, over the last few years we have monitored many Mycetophyllia to death, or near death. This Mycetophyllia ferox (305) is still alive but barely. We are not sure why it has continued to lose its tissues. We suspect that it may be the consequences of thermal stress (bleaching related mortality) and not from Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease. To learn more about degree heating weeks and how that relates to coral bleaching, please visit the below webpage:
https://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/product/5km/tutorial/crw10a_dhw_product.php

25/08/2025

If anyone with a camera needs something to do today/this week we could use your help. Be our citizen scientist friends!!!!!

We would love some photos of the Diadema antillarum (black long spined urchins) from Klein Bay area= below location. We were told that 17 black spined urchins were observed dying over the weekend. What this tends to look like is urchins rolling in the surf or losing their tissues and spines. Photos of this event would be great. Do not touch these urchins and please wash your swim/snorkel gear in freshwater or a light bleach solution before snorkeling anywhere else if you do go to this area of STJ.

If you see long spined or other species of urchins dying anywhere around St. John (or the wider USVI) please send us a message and pics of you have them. Research into these die-offs is ongoing.

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

22/08/2025

Wind Spirit reef may not have a lot of coral cover, but it does have some lovely small corals that have become less common to observe on nearshore reefs of St. John. We hope you enjoy them :)
Unfortunately, there was a little more disease than expected, but we treated all that we saw. We culled a medium sized lionfish -following the guidelines of our still valid permit- but a second juvenile lionfish escaped us. We have not seen a juvenile at this site before... so that was a bummer.

22/08/2025

Sometimes a video of fish is just what the Dr. calls for :). These cuties were seen 08/19/2025 at Wind Spirit, off the north side of St. John, and kept swimming around us while we were finding our tagged coral colonies.