9-foot Stake is a
coral reef
A coral reef is an underwater ecosystem characterized by reef-building corals. Reefs are formed of colonies of coral polyps held together by calcium carbonate. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, whose polyps cluster in group ...
located within the
Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary
The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary is a U.S. National Marine Sanctuary in the Florida Keys. It includes the Florida Reef, the only barrier coral reef in North America and the third-largest coral barrier reef in the world. It also has e ...
. It lies to the south of
Key West
Key West is an island in the Straits of Florida, at the southern end of the U.S. state of Florida. Together with all or parts of the separate islands of Dredgers Key, Fleming Key, Sunset Key, and the northern part of Stock Island, it con ...
, and is west of
Marker 32 reef. Unlike many reefs in the Sanctuary, it is not within a Sanctuary Preservation Area (SPA).
The reef gets its name from a fallen telephone pole within the reef.
Gallery
File:Buoys at 9 Foot Stake.jpg, NOAA
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA ) is an American scientific and regulatory agency charged with forecasting weather, monitoring oceanic and atmospheric conditions, charting the seas, conducting deep-sea exploratio ...
map of the reef
Image:Grunts_9-ft_2010.jpg, A school of grunts and some soft coral
Corals are colonial marine invertebrates within the subphylum Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact Colony (biology), colonies of many identical individual polyp (zoology), polyps. Coral species include the important Coral ...
s at 9-foot Stake reef
Image:Brain coral 9ft Stake 2010.jpg, Brain coral (''Diploria strigosa'') at 9-foot Stake reef in 2010
References
NOAA National Marine Sanctuary Maps, Florida Keys EastNOAA Navigational Chart 11441
{{Corals
Coral reefs of the Florida Keys