A survey of coral communities was carried out in the American Samoa Archipelago to assess the current status of coral reefs and provide a rigorous quantitative baseline dataset for future monitoring of these reefs. Five replicate belt transects were used to estimate the size structure, density and percent cover of corals at 29 locations around Tutuila and Manu'a Islands during October and November, 1995. Data are in .xls and .csv format with associated document files

Transects of the coral colonies at 21 sites in American Samoa were surveyed by Dr. Charles Birkeland during an underwater swim in March 2002. Data for each coral species include abundances and size distributions of the colonies. The living coral cover can be estimated from the size distribution data. Data were collected by the US DOI; Geological Survey - Honolulu in support of the Coral Reef Studies.

This study demonstrates the important role that long term monitoring programs can play in understanding the natural variability and long term trends in the coral reefs of American Samoa. One benefit of this study is that it provides an overview of the condition of the reefs on all the main volcanic islands simultaneously. It also provides a broad scale perspective for understanding the results of the site dedicated monitoring programs in Fagatele Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Pago Pago Harbour (Aua transect: see below), which provide a much longer term perspective on the reefs of Tutuila (85 and 25 years respectively). This dataset includes the status report (PDF and MS Word) and raw survey data (MS Excel) made in 1996 and 2002. Survey sites include all islands of American Samoa, although remote atolls of Swains and Rose were not made in 2002. Surveys were also made in the country of Western Samoa.

In 2010 the village of Fagamalo, Tutuila, American Samoa, designated a no-take Marine Protected Area that sees the protection of 2.25 square kilometers of ocean. Because little is known regarding the status of living marine communities in the area, and at the request of the American Samoa Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources, NOAA scientists conducted surveys to assess the status of the benthic communities and establish a baseline against which to compare temporal change. The tabular data described here were collected via belt transect surveys of coral demography (adult and juvenile corals) by the NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) according to protocols established by the NOAA National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP). In 2015 data were collected at 18 stratified randomly selected sites. These data include: 1) an assessment of coral colony density and size-class distribution for the selected monitoring sites; 2) an assessment of coral recruitment at the monitoring sites; and 3) an evaluation of coral colony condition, including mortality, disease, and bleaching. These data can be accessed online via the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Ocean Archive. Additionally, photoquadrat benthic images were also collected (documented and archived separately).