Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program: Rapid Ecological Assessments of Fish Large-Area Stationary Point Count Surveys (SPC) at Coral Reef Sites across the Pacific Ocean from 2000 to 2007

Data as a DwC-A file	download 3,642 records in English (2 MB) - Update frequency: not planned
Metadata as an EML file	download in English (8 KB)
Metadata as an RTF file	download in English (8 KB)

Description

The large-area stationary point count (SPC) method was used to conduct reef fish surveys in the Hawaiian and Mariana Archipelagos, American Samoa, and the Pacific Remote Island Areas as part of NOAA's Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program (Pacific RAMP). The SPC method catalogs the diversity (species richness), abundance (numeric density) and biomass (fish mass per unit area) of diurnally active reef fish assemblages in shallow-water (typically 10-15m, always < 30m) hard-bottom habitats. Stationary Point Counts (SPC) is one of several non-invasive underwater-survey methods to enumerate the diverse components of diurnally active shallow-water reef fish assemblages. At each REA survey sites, SPC fish surveys were conducted at 4 stations in conjunction with, but at least 10 m away from 3 consecutively-placed, 25m transect lines to quantify relatively larger (>25 cm Total Length [TL]) and more vagile fish species(BLT). All fishes >25 cm TL are recorded to species-level that enter a 20 m diameter cylinder (area ~314 m2) during a timed 5 minute count. Individuals or groups are estimated to the nearest 5 cm TL size-class bin. Four replicate, 5 minute cylinder counts are conducted at each station. Care is taken to avoid over-counting large transient or schooling species. Transects lines and stations are typically set at depths of 10-15 m. Reef ledges and holes are visually searched. Stations are completed on all sides of the island/atoll, weather and sea conditions permitting. Raw survey data included species level abundance estimates.

Data Records

The data in this sampling event resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 3,642 records.

2 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.

3642

205779

28934

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

How to cite

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Coral Reef Ecosystem Program; Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (2017). Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program: Rapid Ecological Assessments of Fish Large-Area Stationary Point Count Surveys (SPC) in the Pacific Ocean from 2000-09-09 to 2007-06-08 (NCEI Accession 0162466). NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. Dataset.

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is United States Geological Survey. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 1510ce8d-3184-48db-bc38-592328868181. United States Geological Survey publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by U.S. Geological Survey.