After the Fall: The Demographic Destiny of a Gorgonian Population Stricken by Catastrophic Mortality

In recent years, the frequency of mass mortality events in marine ecosystems has increased, and several populations of benthic organism have been affected, reducing their density and changing their size and age structure. Few details are known about the dynamics of these populations over long time intervals. In late summer of both 1999 and 2003 two drastic mass mortality events, co-occurring with anomalous temperature increases, affected the northwestern Mediterranean rocky coastal communities. Due to these events the Paramuricea clavata population living at the western edge of La Spezia Gulf (Italy) was stricken, and 78% of the colonies died. This population was monitored from 1998 (pre-mortality) until 2013. This paper deals with the photographic sampling of permanent plots carried out in 2013. The findings were compared with those from the previous sampling series. This long-term, non-destructive sampling highlights the demographic trajectory of the octocoral population there after two anomalous mortality events, indicating that some new drop-point between local extinction and complete recovery may be have been reached. Long-term monitoring (including pre-mortality data) could allow evaluating the effects of global climate change on the conservation of impacted populations.