This data was collected under National Fish & Wildlife Foundation Grant 0318.20.069532 awarded to The Nature Conservancy's U.S. Virgin Islands division. The project is titled 'Strengthening Coastal Resilience through Coral Reef Restoration (VI)'. The data contributes to ecological goal-based metrics outlined in the project's Implentation and Monitoring Plan. More specifically, this data was collected to measure the following metrics related to coral communities within defined reef habitats (reef crest and forereef) within and around the 50 acre restoration site: coral abundance, restored coral abundance, coral health (percent old and recent mortality, bleaching prevalence, disease prevalence), coral species richness, coral species diversity, and coral species evenness.

This data was collected within the East End Marine Park on the northeastern side of the island of St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands. For each timepoint, data was collected at 12 random points (6 points in each habitat type) within the restoration area (restore sites) and 6 random points (3 points in each reef type) outside of the restoration area (control sites).

Data was collected using the methodologies described in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 'National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP) Coral Demographics Survey Protocol for the Atlantic Region: U.S. Caribbean, Florida and Gulf of Mexico: 2018' authored by the Coral Reef Conservation Program (U.S.)