Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program: Rapid Ecological Assessments of Fish Large-Area Stationary Point Count Surveys (SPC) at Coral Reef Sites across the Pacific Ocean from 2000 to 2007

The large-area stationary point count (SPC) method was used to conduct reef fish surveys in the Hawaiian and Mariana Archipelagos, American Samoa, and the Pacific Remote Island Areas as part of NOAA's Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program (Pacific RAMP). The SPC method catalogs the diversity (species richness), abundance (numeric density) and biomass (fish mass per unit area) of diurnally active reef fish assemblages in shallow-water (typically 10-15m, always < 30m) hard-bottom habitats. Stationary Point Counts (SPC) is one of several non-invasive underwater-survey methods to enumerate the diverse components of diurnally active shallow-water reef fish assemblages. At each REA survey sites, SPC fish surveys were conducted [...]