[Coral-List] First survey results

Barbara Kojis bkojis at hotmail.com
Fri Jan 20 12:05:15 EST 2012


Note that the survey concentrated on presence of specific fish families, large fish and turtles.  There were no questions about the condition of the coral, gorgonians, etc. on the reef.  The status of coral diversity and abundance does not affect the presence or abundance of most reef fish species.  Fish generally require structured habitat and their presence and abundance does not decrease if the coral declines as long as the habitat structure remains.  So while someone may respond that the dive site is overall "good" because fish are still present in reasonable numbers and diversity, if asked about the state of the reefs themselves they may have a different response. Barbara

Dr. Barbara Kojis 
St. Thomas, USVI 00803 

 > Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:53:51 -0600
> From: helder.perez at gmail.com
> To: bastiaan.vermonden at gmail.com
> CC: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> Subject: Re: [Coral-List] First survey results
> 
> Interesting results, Bastiaan. Do most of the diving destinations fall in
> one or two regions or do you think they represent well enough the coral
> reefs around the world?
> 
> 
> Helder I. Pérez
> 
> 
> On 20 January 2012 04:27, Bastiaan Vermonden
> <bastiaan.vermonden at gmail.com>wrote:
> 
> > Dear coral listers,
> >
> > First I would like to thank all the coral listers who (already) contributed
> > a survey, thank you! Right now I have 115 surveys. I was wondering whether
> > some people might be interested in the inititial results. If you send me an
> > email I will be happy to provide the data I have right now.
> >
> > One interesting result I found is that while we talk about the coral reef
> > crisis nearly all divers still consider the diving destinations in good
> > shape. On a range of 1 to 5 with 1 being the worst and 5 being the best the
> > average rating divers gave for diving destinations was 4.28. Of course the
> > survey data is not random and it could be that right now I am attracting
> > the biggest optimists but I still think it raises some interesting
> > questions. Also not every destination had coral reefs but definitely the
> > majority.
> >
> > If you would still like to contribute a survey or you know someone who
> > would like to then you can find my survey here.
> >
> >
> > https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFVTMENIbWhSanNxRVJQaS1vSUgxbXc6MQ
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Bastiaan Vermonden
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> > http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
> >
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