A paper recently published in the journal Fish and Fisheries explores 70 years of visual fish census techniques, including the REEF Volunteer Fish Survey Project. The paper, titled "Global Analysis of Shallow Underwater Fish Observation Research: 70 Years of Progress, Persistent Geographic Biases and a Path Forward," was one output of a multi-year Working Group called CoNCENSUS. Marine ecosystems are increasingly threatened by overfishing, pollution, coastal development and climate change, underscoring the need for long-term, representative information on key fish populations and habitats to inform management and policy. Underwater fish observation techniques, such as Underwater Visual Census (UVC - which includes the REEF Volunteer Fish Survey Project and its Roving Diver Technique method), stereo-Baited Remote Underwater Video (stereo-BRUV), and Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs), all play a key role in sustaining long-term data collection. This published study included an analysis of 1443 peer-reviewed publications (1953–2023), employing natural language processing and network analysis to map the research landscape. The authors identified 15 knowledge clusters, including marine protected areas, apex predator conservation, and reef ecosystems. Their findings reveal increasing use of BRUVS and ROVs in studies of marine protected areas and subsea infrastructure, while UVC remains prevalent in shallow coral reef research. Access to this paper, and all scientific publications that include REEF data and programs, can be found at www.REEF.org/db/publications.
CoNCENSUS is short for "Advancing Standardisation of Coastal and Nearshore Demersal Fish Visual Census Techniques". REEF's Co-Executive Director, Dr. Christy Pattengill-Semmens, was part of the Working Group, which met between 2022 and 2026. The CoNCENSUS Working Group aims to enable the adoption of best practice guidelines and protocols for the collection, management, and curation of fish survey observations based on traditional and novel methodologies in order to provide recommendations on how best to utilise data from multiple methods to monitor and study coastal fish populations from local to global scales. This work was supported by the Special Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) and was led by Angus John van Wyk, a PhD candidate at Rhodes University and a Research Student at the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (NRF-SAIAB).
The full citation of the paper is: van Wyk, AJ, RD Stuart-Smith, JS Goetze, et al. 2026. Global Analysis of Shallow Underwater Fish Observation Research: 70 years of progress, persistent geographic biases and a path forward. Fish and Fisheries. 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.70072
Image above is Image 4 from the publication: Temporal evolution of research themes from the 1950s to 2023, illustrated as an alluvial diagram. The vertical bars represent distinct historical periods, with their width indicating the proportion of discourse during that time. The connecting flows indicate the degree of thematic continuity, with broader flows signifying themes that account for a larger proportion of discourse. Lines that remain connected over time form part of the same theme.