We are pleased to share the publication of two new scientific papers that utilize data collected by REEF volunteers in the Monterey Peninsula area of California. Co-authored by REEF Pacific Advanced Assessment Team (AAT) member, John Wolfe, and REEF Director of Science, Dr. Christy Pattengill-Semmens, the companion papers were published earlier this summer in the journal CalCOFI Reports. The first paper, Estimating Fish Populations From REEF Citizen Science Volunteer Diver Order-of-Magnitude Surveys, describes several mathematical models to convert order-of-magnitude count data (the type of data collected during REEF Roving Diver Technique surveys) to a numeric mean. The second paper, Fish Population Fluctuation Estimates Based on Fifteen Years of REEF Volunteer Diver Data For the Monterey Peninsula, California, used the best-performing model technique to evaluate population trends in rocky reef fish species along the Monterey Peninsula. Over 3,000 REEF surveys have been conducted in this region over the last 15 years. Many of these data were collected during an annual project within the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary conducted with the help of members of the Pacific AAT. Changes in relative density over time were reported for 18 fish species, including several fisheries-targeted species. Strong concordance was also found between REEF data and those collected by Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO), a consortium of academic institutions. Results showed that data collected by REEF have great potential to augment and strengthen professional research data and serve as a valuable baseline to evaluate marine reserves. Both of these papers can be found on the REEF Publications page here - www.REEF.org/db/publications (as well as downloadable from the CalCOFI Reports webpage).
