Putting It to Work: Who’s Using REEF Data, September 2011
By Christy Pattengill-Semmens, Ph.D., Director of Science
Every month, scientists, government agencies, and other groups request raw data from REEF’s Fish Survey Project database. Here is a sampling of who has asked for REEF data recently and what they are using it for:
- Scientists from NOAA Fisheries are using REEF data to conduct stock assessments on parrotfishes in Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands.
- REEF Advanced Assessment Team members joined the Living Oceans Foundation's Global Reef Expedition in the Bahamas. Scientists from LOF are now using the REEF data collected to generate species distribution maps of remote areas including Cay Sal Bank.
- A researcher from the Gilbert Ichthyological Society at the Burke Museum in Washington is evaluating the distribution of the two sub-species of blue rockfish along the west coast.
Upcoming Fishinars - Lionfish and Fish Behavior Added to the Schedule
By Janna Nichols, REEF Outreach Coordinator
If you haven't had a chance to attend one of our Fishinars yet, you should! New sessions are continually being added, so check out the Webinar Training page (www.REEF.org/resources/webinars) to see the current schedule and to register for one or more sessions. These popular online training sessions (webinars) provide fishie fun in the comfort of your own home. Fishinars are open to divers, snorkelers, and devout landlubbers alike. Participation is free but you need to register for each session you want to attend. No special software is required, just a web browser. You don't need a microphone or a webcam to be able to participate. Great for first-timers or those wanting a review. Upcoming sessions include:
QUE PASA? THE TOP 12 FISH OF THE NORTHERN SEA OF CORTEZ - Tropical Eastern Pacific (TEP) region REEF Fish ID: Learn tips from REEF Expert and fish geek, Jonathan Lavan, on how to ID Sea of Cortez fish. Wednesday, April 18th at 5pm PDT / 8pm EDT
LIONFISH 101 - Join REEF's Special Projects Director, Lad Akins for an hour long update on the lionfish invasion, biology/ecology, impacts and what is being done throughout the region. Lad's talk will be followed by a 15 minute Q&A session; Wednesday, April 25th at 8pm EDT
SPEED DATING FISHY STYLE: HOW FISH SPAWN AND WHEN YOU'RE LIKELY TO CATCH THEM IN THE ACT- Ned DeLoach, world renowned marine life photographer/author, Co-Founder of REEF, fish behavior guru and all-around nice guy, will teach you about making fish babies. Ned's talk will be followed by a Q&A session. Wednesday, May 9th at 8pm EDT
THE NORTHEAST'S DIRTY DOZEN - What those die-hard drysuit divers in the North Atlantic are seeing on their dives. A great way to prepare yourself for the Great Annual Fish Count in July. Friday, May 18th at 7pm EDT
New Webinars Coming Up
By Janna Nichols, REEF Outreach Coordinator
New Fishinars have been added! Check out the Webinar Training page (www.REEF.org/resources/webinars). These popular online training sessions provide fishie fun in the comfort of your own home. Fishinars are free, and open to all REEF members. You need to register for each session you want to attend. No special software is required, just a web browser. Upcoming sessions include:
Super Duper Grouper - Are you groping for groupers? These carnivores of the reef are often hard to tell apart. Let REEF fish geek Jonathan Lavan help guide you through the tricks of the trade, and soon you'll be a Super Duper Grouper Sleuther! Thursday, October 11th at 8pm EDT. REGISTER
The Grunt Club!- Grunts, Grunts, everywhere - but how to tell them apart? Join the Grunt Club! REEF fish expert Jonathan Lavan will teach you simple tricks for keeping all the stripes separate on these buggers. Tuesday, November 6th at 8pm EDT. REGISTER
Caribbean Hit Parade! Top 25 Fish - Caribbean REEF Fish ID: Learn tips from REEF Expert and fish geek, Jonathan Lavan, on how to ID the top 25 fish in the Caribbean. An interactive format makes it ideal for asking questions and learning while having fun. Essential for dive travelers heading to Cozumel, Bonaire, and any other Caribbean destination. [Note: This will be a LONG course. Two hours, not the usual one hour length, so plan accordingly.] Thursday, December 6th at 8pm EDT. REGISTER
Test Your ID Skills Online
By REEF Staff
We recently updated our online quizzes to add several more regions, including the South Pacific, the Northeast, California Invertebrates, and the South Atlantic. If it's been a while since you have visited this resource on our website, check it out today. These fun quizzes are a great way to test your ID skills. You can take the quiz as many times as you want, and questions are randomly generated so it will always be a bit different. Have fun!
2008 Field Surveys: Sign Up Now!
By Leda A. Cunningham, Executive Director
REEF announces the release of the 2008 Field Survey schedule. Click here to see the flyer and read more information on these unique eco-expeditions, including contact information for each trip.
We kick off the season with a special expedition to Little Cayman Island January 20-27. Participants will join REEF Science Director Dr. Christy Semmens on the seventh consecutive year of studying reproductive behavior of the endangered Nassau grouper. Contact Southern Cross Club directly to sign up at (800) 899 CLUB (2582). This is a high-demand trip so please reserve your spot soon.
Field Surveys offer participants a fun and educational way to contribute to marine conservation. Led by expert underwater naturalists, scuba divers and snorkelers will learn to identify marine life and conduct fish population surveys that assist scientists in making informed resource management decisions. A unique combination of classroom presentations, group discussion and survey dives make Field Surveys the ideal choice for people just getting started with diving or "fish watching." We invite you to join a REEF Field Survey team of like-minded divers and snorkelers who want to make a difference for the future of our oceans. 2008 destinations include the Akumal, Mexico, St. Vincent, the Sea of Cortez, and many others-sign up today!
Five-Year Wellwood Restoration Assessment Completed
By Joe Cavanaugh, Director of Field Operations
REEF has just completed our final assessment report for our five-year Wellwood Restoration Site monitoring project. Before I share some results from our study, let me give you a little background information and please visit our website to view our full report http://www.reef.org/programs/monitoring/wellwood. The M/V Wellwood, a 122-meter Cypriot-registered freighter, ran aground on August 4, 1984, on Molasses Reef off Key Largo, Florida, part of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS). The ship impacted the reef’s upper fore reef and subsequently remained aground for 12 days. The grounding destroyed 1,285 square meters of living coral reef and injured 644 square meters of coral reef framework. Prior to the grounding, the area was a transition zone with high relief coral formations. The grounding transformed the area into a flattened, barren pavement covered with coral rubble.
The study area of this project included a portion of the grounding area that is being restored and two adjacent reference sites. The Restoration site surveyed included restoration modules and contiguous low profile hardbottom areas adjacent to and in between the restoration modules. Nearby high profile reef, ledges, and undamaged/unrestored reef were not included as part of the Restoration Site. A north and south undamaged reef area were both used as two control sites to compare fish sighting data between the Restoration area and the natural (control) reefs.
REEF’s study focused on fish assemblages and not the coral and invertebrate communities. A team of Advanced Assessment Team REEF Experts conducted Roving Diver Technique (RDT) surveys in addition to belt transect surveys on the Wellwood restoration site and two adjacent natural reef sites seven times during Year 1. The team visited the sites once prior to restoration (May 2002) and 13 times after restoration was completed, monthly for the first three months, quarterly for the following year and semi-annually thereafter. An average of 12 surveys of each survey type was conducted during each survey effort. While REEF surveyors used the RDT surveys to collect sighting frequency and abundance data on fishes over all three reef areas, the belt-transect method was used to collect density and biomass data on fish taxa. These two methods used together give us a snapshot of how the restoration site is recovering in terms of fish assemblages as compared to the two non-impacted, adjacent reef areas.
Obviously, the most notable observation a diver makes when diving on the Restoration site is one of just how long it takes coral reefs to recover after devastating ship impacts. The Restoration site shows little resemblance to the surrounding non-impacted reef sites. The areas surrounding the Restoration site are high relief reef areas dominated by reef building corals with some very old colonies of Star coral (Monastrea annularis) and Elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata), old to the tune of thousands, not hundreds of years old. Age is important here since it takes a long time for coral colonies to rebuild structure and relief that attract different fishes over time. The smaller overall fish populations and absence of many species of fish on the damaged site are both conspicuous and the lack of coral structure makes it easy to destinguish the Restoration area from the surrounding reefs even 23 years after the initial ship grounding. However, there are signs that fishes are very slowly recruiting onto the Restoration site.
During the monitoring period (2002 - 2007), a total of 165 species were recorded at the Restoration site, 189 species at the North reference site and 207 species at the South reference site. The Restoration site recovery is clearly aided by the addition of restoration modules (2002), increasing the amount of available habitat suitable for reef fish communities, think vertical habitat here, and recessed areas underneath these modules for fish to shelter. At the Wellwood grounding site, the overall fish diversity as well as density and biomass of most key fish families continue to be less than that of the two nearby, non-impacted reefs that were selected as monitoring reference sites. Parrotfish and surgeonfish appear to be responding the quickest to the restoration efforts, grazing along a recovering hard coral landscape currently dominated by soft corals (Gorgonians). Nearly absent today on the damaged area are sightings of grunts and snappers, both of which are seen in high frequency and abundance on surrounding reef sites with plenty of relief for them to take cover. Residency of fish, movement patterns and habitat usage are all important indicators of reef recovery. So are linking coral, invertebrate, and fish studies to see a more complete picture of how the Restoration site is improving. There are signs outside of the slowly improving trends the data show such as a little Redspotted hawkfish that has taken residence on one of the modules with lots of Ken's Staghorn coral affixed.
Many more studies are necessary to properly evaluate recovery dynamics for reefs and since most reef recoveries worldwide are hampered by other anthropogenic impacts such as overfishing, excessive nutrient loading from human pollutants, and global warming stresses, these case studies are critically important in developing mitigation strategies for damaged reefs. For the full report on our Wellwood findings, please visit our website http://www.reef.org/programs/monitoring/wellwood. REEF would like to thank the many individual REEF members who dived on this project over the past 5 years, as well as Quiesscence Dive Shop in Key Largo for dive support, and Ken Nedimyer for photos and his ongoing coral replenishment work. And finally, our thanks to the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary for contracting REEF for this project. We hope that this work will continue in order to monitor the long term changes in fish assemblages on the Restoration site.
120,000! And Counting
By Christy Pattengill-Semmens, REEF Director of Science
REEF eclipsed a milestone this week when the REEF Volunteer Survey Project Database passed the 120,000 survey mark. This represents over 150,000 hours of underwater survey time from our volunteers. The achievement comes almost 15 years to the day when the first REEF fish survey was conducted off Key Largo, Florida, on July 17, 1993. Today, the program is going strong throughout the coastal areas of North and Central America, the Caribbean, Bahamas, Galapagos Islands and Hawaii. In the tropical western Atlantic region alone, 96,469 surveys have been conducted at 6,085 sites and 795 fish species have been recorded. Of course, improving your marine life identification skills, building your lifelist of sighted species, and conducting surveys are a lot of fun. But have you ever wondered what good are all of these data?
Volunteer data collection, or citizen science, provides a valuable alternative for scientists and resource agencies needing information but lacking sufficient resources to gather it. In addition, involvement in data collection leads to greater awareness about marine resources and creates a stewardship ethic among key user groups.
In addition to providing data summaries on the REEF Website, REEF staff provide raw data to scientists and resource agencies. REEF data have been used in the development of stock assessments (Kingsley 2004), in the evaluation of trends of fish species (Semmens et al. 2000), to measure the effect of marine protected areas on kelp forest fish communities (Semmens et al. in prep) and coral reefs (REEF 2003), as an indicator of population pressure on natural resources (Burke and Maidens 2004), to evaluate interactions between species and species-habitat relationships (Auster et al. 2005), to asses the effect of restoration efforts in areas of damaged reef (REEF 2008), and to asses the status of a group of reef fish species that is experiencing significant declines (Ward-Paige et al., in prep A and B). REEF volunteers have been instrumental in the identification and removal of exotic species (Semmens et al. 2004), in the identification of new species (Taylor and Akins 2007; Weaver and Rocha 2007) and morphological variants of known species (Pattengill-Semmens 1999), and in the documentation of previously unrecorded range extensions (M. Taylor and J. Van Tassel, Pers. Comm.). PDFs of most of these articles and a full listing of scientific papers and reports that have used REEF data are included in the Publications section of the REEF Website.
REEF extends a big thank you to the 10,000+ volunteers who have contributed to this database over the years and we are looking forward to the next 120,000 surveys! Be sure to visit the Top 10 Stats page to see a quick rundown of REEF survey activity. You can also explore the data more in-depth by visiting the Database section of the REEF.org Website.
Peter Hughes Belize Lionfish Invasion Trip
By Lad Akins, REEF Director of Special Projects
The upcoming Peter Hughes Belize Lionfish awareness/outreach trip turns to lionfish research/removal after the first lionfish was discovered in Central American waters. Join REEF aboard the Sun Dancer II from June 13-20 for this exciting and fun diving adventures. Following eye opening presentations by REEF staff and partners at the recent DEMA dive show in October, long-time supporter Peter Hughes took on a new mission - to support REEF's efforts in addressing the lionfish invasion in the Caribbean. With his world-renowned fleet of liveaboard dive vessels and concern for the marine environment, Peter became an instant supporter after hearing details of the invasion. In stepping up to the plate, he offered his Belize-based liveaboard, Sun Dancer II, as a platform to raise funds and increase awareness of the issue during a June 13-20 expedition. Little did he know that within 2 short months, lionfish would actually show up in Belize in advance of our planned project.
Sun Dancer II instructors, leading a group of divers on Turneffe Reef, spotted a juvenile lionfish on December 11, 2008. Subsequent dives provided images verifying the sighting and Sun Dancer Captain Ryan Barnett, who had previously worked with REEF during Bahamas lionfish projects, put the early warning system into action through his report to REEF HQ. While the fish has yet to be recovered, Sun Dancer staff now have divers on the lookout and are stocking the vessel with collecting supplies.
While the fundraising efforts of the June project remain, the focus of the June project has now shifted to include more detailed data gathering and collection of any lionfish specimens found. Additional workshops are being organized with Belizean authorities to assist in development and implementation of their lionfish response plan. For those interested in joining the June 13-20 project aboard the Sun Dancer, please view the project webpage or contact Peter Hughes Diving directly at (800) 9-DANCER. For more information on the lionfish issue and to support REEF's efforts, go to www.reef.org/lionfish or contact Lad Akins (Lad@REEF.org) (305) 852-0030.
Exciting Schedule of REEF Trips Planned For 2010
By REEF Staff
We are excited to announce a great line-up of destinations for REEF's 2010 Field Survey Travel Schedule. These fun and educational eco-dive trips are part of REEF's Volunteer Survey Project and they are the perfect way to "Make a Dive That Counts". The week-long trips are a great introduction to fish identification for novice fishwatchers, and a fun way for experienced surveyors to build their life list while interacting with fellow fishwatchers. Trips are led by REEF staff and other REEF instructors and feature daily classroom seminars and a full diving schedule. We are featuring several new destinations, including the northern Baja Peninsula and Roatan, as well as returning to some of our member's favorites like Dominica and Grand Cayman. Several specialty trips are also being offered in 2010, including invasive lionfish research projects and reef fish behavior tours.
REEF Trip Schedule 2010 -- Prices, package details and more available soon.
To inquire about a trip and to book your space, please contact our REEF Dedicated Sales Consultant at REEF@caradonna.com or by phone at 1-877-295-REEF(7333). Additional details will be added to the REEF Trips webpage soon, so check back often. Book early, trips often fill up!
Share on FacebookREEF Welcomes New Board Member
By REEF Board of Trustees
We are pleased to welcome Marty Snyderman to our Board of Trustees. Marty is an EMMY Award winning cinematographer, still photographer, author and speaker. He currently serves as the Marine Life Editor for Dive Training Magazine and is the long time author of the magazine’s monthly “What’s That”, “Always Learning”, and “Behind the Lens” columns. He is the 2008 recipient of DEMA’s (Dive Equipment Marketing Association) Reaching Out Award and joined the ranks of DEMA’s Hall of Fame. Many REEF members also know him for his co-produced shark identification DVD, Sharks and Their Kin.
Board of Trustees member Andy Dehart of the National Aquarium recounts: “I met Marty when he joined our production company on an extended Alaskan expedition to document the elusive salmon shark. Despite record rainfall, backcountry camping, bears, a scarcity of sharks, and an unrelenting stench from decaying salmon, Marty’s passion for the adventure remained boundless. The more I learned about his knowledge of marine wildlife, and commitment to the marine environment, it became obvious that Marty would be a valuable addition to the REEF Board.”
As a resident of Solana Beach, California, Marty joins Board member Heather George and Pacific Northwest staff as REEF continues to expand its mission on the west coast. Marty, Welcome Aboard!