Wake Island, also known as Wake Atoll, is an isolated coral atoll in the western Pacific Ocean. The island is a U.S. territory used by the U.S. Air Force. The surrounding marine areas are part of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument and are home to over a hundred species of reef-building corals, many of which are difficult to identify even by experts. This field guide to some of the most common corals of Wake provides a resource for coral reef scientists, managers, and monitoring teams working on the island. Corals are presented in the conventional taxonomic order, because it puts corals that are morphologically similar together, which facilitates learning to distinguish them. A few modifications of that order have been introduced to help put similar looking species closer together. This guide presently has 79 coral species in 27 genera.
