Deep-sea coral habitats off the north atlantic Morocco: Distribution and associated communities.

The recent decline in the health status of deep-sea habitats around the world has pushed the need to document and map their distribution to preserve them in their marine ecosystems. This work describes deep-water coral habitats (133-729 m) and their associated communities, based on nine ROV video transects. These transects cover a 171 km sub-seafloor profile within a predefined 5560 km area along the North Atlantic coast of Morocco, surveyed in 2020 as part of a coral habitat mapping study under the FAO-NANSEN programme.