This dataset is from expert elicitation of a panel of 15 experts with knowledge of stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) and its impacts on coral reefs. We gathered this group of 15 participants with diverse expertise who had previously studied SCTLD including at universities and various government agencies as microbiologists, pathologists, disease ecologists, population ecologists, and coral experts. Participants represented marine disease experts in Florida, Hawaii, South Carolina, and the US Virgin Islands. We then used a rapid prototyping approach (Runge and Converse, 2017) to elicit, structure, and evaluate existing knowledge regarding the etiology of SCTLD. Our approach began with eliciting hypotheses about the cause of SCTLD from the expert panel over the course of four meetings, conducted via videoconference between 8/13/2021 and 11/09/2021.Each expert was assigned a unique identification number ('identity') that was displayed with their responses in place of experts’ names to keep results anonymous. After the first meeting, we asked each expert to identify 2 – 6 hypotheses and associated predictions for the causative agent(s) of SCTLD. We consolidated the experts’ hypotheses and removed redundant ones, resulting in ten final hypotheses for the etiology of SCTLD.We considered two elicitation approaches that hereafter we refer to as method 1 (M1) and method 2 (M2). M1 was intended to get an overall assessment of the state of knowledge across experts regarding the cause of SCTLD. For M1, we asked the experts to allocate 100 points across the 10 hypotheses based on the weight of evidence that they believe existed in support of each hypothesis. Experts were allowed to use their own knowledge and any sources of information available to them, but not to confer with each other regarding their scores. Following discussions and based on the input of the experts, we revised the definition of the hypotheses. We then asked the experts to revise their estimates, if needed, and used these revised estimates (Round 2 or R2 within the dataset) for the M1 analyses. The second approach, M2, was developed to provide a framework for deriving belief weights for the hypotheses based on assessments of individual studies. We initially asked panel members to select four studies relevant to the etiology of SCTLD. From these, we selected the five studies that received the most votes from the experts including: Aeby et al., 2019; Kellogg and Evans, 2021; Landsberg et al., 2020; Ushijima et al., 2020; Work et al., 2021. For all studies, we provided background information and/or the associated publication, and authors associated with these studies either discussed the results directly or provided written comments about the studies to the expert panelists. Under the M2 approach, experts were asked to evaluate whether hypothesis h was supported or not by a given study s. The experts were asked to allocate 100 points between two options for each hypothesis and for each study: “yes” there is supportive evidence for hypothesis h, or “no” there is no support for hypothesis h according to study s. For example, “yes: 80; no: 20” (hereafter noted as “80/20”) for hypothesis h indicates that expert e considered that study s provided strong supportive evidence for hypothesis h (i.e., there was an 80% chance that the study supports hypothesis h and a 20% chance that it did not). If the study was irrelevant with regards to hypothesis h (i.e., the study could not by its design provide evidence for or against the hypothesis), the experts entered “Not Applicable” (“NA”).

Preliminary experiments were conducted to determine optimal turbidity dosing systems for coral fragments and the parameters and results of each experiment (10) were reported. Three coral challenge experiments were performed on Orbicella faveolata fragments with varying durations: 48 h, 96 h and 13 days between 2/18/2020 and 3/22/2020. Tissue regeneration (wound healing) was measured on fragments during the exposure periods. Wound images were collected and ImageJ analyses of the wound size were recorded. Sediment particle sizes were measured on 9/28/2022 and a sea urchin embryo development toxicity test (9/1/2022-9/3/2022) was used to evaluate potential toxicity in the sediment used for the coral exposures.

The USGS Coral Reef Ecosystems Studies project (https://coastal.er.usgs.gov/crest/) provides science that helps resource managers tasked with the stewardship of coral reef resources. This data release contains data on coral-growth rates for Orbicella sp. coral colonies grown at five sites on the Florida Keys reef tract from 2013 to 2015, survey data for census-based carbonate budgeting at Hen and Chickens Reef (Islamorada, Florida) collected in 2017, and time-series photographs taken of permanent markers used to measure reef erosion at Hen and Chickens Reef in 1998 and 2015. The time-series photographs document a loss in coral-reef elevation over 17 years at this site. The data will be used to inform resource managers of the capacity for future growth (or loss) of reefs dominated by genus Orbicella in the Florida Keys so that the reef ecosystem might be better understood and managed. The datasets included here were interpreted in Kuffner and others (2019). Kuffner, I.B., Toth, L.T., Hudson, J.H., Goodwin, W.B., Stathakopoulos, A., Bartlett, L.A. and Whitcher, E.M. (2019), Improving estimates of coral reef construction and erosion with in situ measurements. Limnol Oceanogr. doi:10.1002/lno.11184