Standardized Visual Counts of Goliath Grouper off South Florida and Their Possible Use as Indices of Abundance

This paper evaluates two sets of fisheries-independant data on Goliath grouper populations in Florida. The datasets include the REEF Survey Project database and personal observations from a professional spearfisher. Because all harvest of this species was prohibted starting in 1990, fisheries-independant data like these are critical to understanding change in the populations, including any recovery that may be occuring. The paper also provides information on standarization techniques that can be applied to the REEF data.