Reef fish communities are spooked by scuba surveys and may take hours to recover.

ABSTRACT: Ecological monitoring programs typically aim to detect changes in the abundance of species of conservation concern or which reflect system status. Coral reef fish assemblages are functionally important for reef health and these are most commonly monitored using underwater visual surveys (UVS) by divers. In addition to estimating numbers, most programs also collect estimates of fish lengths to allow calculation of biomass, an important determinant of a fish's functional impact. However, diver surveys may be biased because fishes may either avoid or are attracted to divers and the process of estimating fish length could result in fish counts that differ from those made without length estimations. Here we investigated whether (1) general diver disturbance and (2) the additional task of estima

SUBMITTER: Emslie MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5971101 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature