Ecological Risk Assessment of Munitions Compounds on Coral and Coral Reef Health

This project was undertaken by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Ocean Service (NOS) National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) and Haereticus Environmental Laboratory (HEL) to investigate whether munitions compounds (MCs) or their breakdown products impact corals, and to determine the ecological risk they may pose to coral and coral reef health. At the outset of this project, we were asked by the SERDP Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) to modify our originally proposed project by the addition of laboratory toxicity testing. This interim report documents the results for Task 1 of this project, which was to conduct standard laboratory toxicity testing using a coral cell toxicity assay, establishing NOEC and LOEC values and effect-concentration (LC or EC) values. Prepared in collaboration with Haereticus Environmental Laboratory.