Systematic global assessment of reef fish communities by the Reef Life Survey program.

Abstract

Discussion of the Reef Life Survey Methods Manual: https://www.oceanbestpractices.net/handle/11329/447. Established in 2007 as a means to overcome the shortage of resources and capacity to provide quantitative data on marine species over large temporal and spatial scales, the Reef Life Survey (RLS) program has involved data collection by an international network of trained volunteer (or ‘citizen’) scientists and professional biologists largely acting in a voluntary capacity. Focussing on quality of outputs and consistency of data through selective inclusion and training of volunteer participants, rather than broader engagement of all interested, RLS fills a niche between other citizen science programs and large-scale professional initiatives such as the Census of Marine Life. The RLS program represents a marine analogue to well-organized and large-scale amateur bird watching programs (e.g., eBird and the Christmas Bird Count), but with a more structured quantitative sampling methodology than most. Through the long term, it aims to provide a biological equivalent to the synoptic picture of the physical parameters generated for the world’s oceans through sensor networks such as the ARGO float array10 and the Australian Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS). Here we describe the global reef fish dataset collected by the Reef Life Survey program, which can be used to assess large-scale spatial patterns in diversity and community structure, and as a baseline for comparison with future surveys, to address long-standing ecological questions or conservation goals. These data have already been used to describe global patterns in reef fish functional diversity11 and have provided the most comprehensive empirical assessment of key features for successful marine protected area (MPA) design and management12. The dataset described here includes all survey sites analysed for the latter study, with the exception of data collected using the same methodology from 107 sites that were provided to us for analysis but belong to other organisations or are otherwise confidential. Some transects surveyed at different depths at the same site, but on different days, have also been excluded from this dataset, which only includes surveys from the latest date (at the time of writing) at any given site.