Laying down our skills

As an economics student I never thought when coming to Uni that I would be swimming a 25m coral transect in the Red Sea! Yet this was the scene yesterday as the whole team took to the Lighthouse Reef to practise data collection methods. With Lydia & Jen as our teachers we were in good hands, although they made it look so effortless. It took a while for the rest of us to get to grips with collecting data and snorkelling at the same time, so much so that Michael and Guy took to the water for an early morning practise dive at 6am the next day to eradicate some buoyancy and breathing issues (Michael’s feet still continue to sink!).

 

The first method we tested was line intersect sampling for coral. We laid out a 25m transect using a tape measure, with surprising difficulty, although with the help if a few hair-bobbles we managed to successfully set up the transects! We then swam along the transect noting down on the slates every change in substrate, from sands, rocks and all the various types of coral. We have been busy learning all the coral and fish species in English and Latin and this was a great opportunity to put this into practise.

We then moved onto line point sampling whereby again we laid down a 25m transect and swam along it but this time only noting down the substrate at every 50cm intervals. This was a lot easier and quicker albeit less accurate.

 

The last method we used for coral analysis was the quadrat method whereby quadrats were placed carefully as to not damage the coral at random points along the reef. We then took it in turn to note down percentage cover and coral species for every individual square paying attention to whether it was dead or alive. This was a lot harder than it first appeared as we kept floating away from the transect due to the strong underlying currents.

For fish species sampling we lined out another 25m transect and practised snorkelling very slowly (more like drifting….) along the transect at around 10m per minute as this is the optimal speed in order to be able to identify and note down species I.D. This time we attempted to note down all the fish that came within a 5m width range (2.5m either side of the transect line). This provided its problems as not only are you trying to achieve the right speed but trying to work out if fish are leaving and re-entering the transect in which case they need to be discarded from our data.

Throughout the 2 snorkels we paid great attention to our buddy pairs; swimming the transect next to one another, keeping eye contact to ensure we were always within a safe distance. The day was not complete until a full de-brief was done where we went over the different methods and their pro’s and con’s  with regards to our projects.

 

Michael

You can have a look at the pictures here....

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