This manual describes all aspects of REEF data collection and processing. It also provides examples of interpretation of the Fish Survey Project data, and how REEF data are used for The Nature Conservancy's Conservation Profiles.
Chapters 2, 4, and 5 of this dissertation present data collected using the RDT. Chapter 2 presents the complete fish assemblage reported by RDT and Stationary Diver Technique (SDT; referred to in Bohnsack, 1996, as the SST) surveys over three years of semi-annual surveys of the Flower Gardens and Stetson Bank, in the northwest Gulf of Mexico. Chapter 4 examines the quality of fish census data generated by REEF nonexperts, and was published in the Journal of Gulf of Mexico Science (Pattengill-Semmens and Semmens, 1998). Chapter 5 provides discussion on the applications and reasons for choosing the RDT and the SDT for this project. A comparison between the abundance estimates of the two methods and the biases inherent in each is also given.
Roving diver data gathered by expert volunteers in the Florida Keys are presented and discussed. These data are found to be comparable to other Florida Keys published studies. Differences in the fish assemblages between the three regions of the Keys, the upper, lower, and the Dry Tortugas, are reported and evaluated. This paper was the first published account of the Roving Diver Technique (RDT).
This report is a summary of the first 3 years of the Fish Survey Project in the Florida Keys, with comparisons among FKNMS sites and with other distant regions. It demonstrates some ways in which data from the Project can be used.
This short paper, prepared after the second year of the Fish Survey Project, overviews the RDT and the more quantitative Stationary Sampling Technique. The advantages to the REEF RDT are discussed, including the information provided on fisheries-independent species and its simplicity. The author concludes that both methods can be used to answer a wide variety of monitoring and scientific questions, although each has advantages and disadvantages. Summary posted online at http://www.epa.gov/owow/oceans/coral/symposium/bohnsack.html.
This report is the first publication of the RDT, and was initially given at the Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute meeting in Spring 1994.