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"AMPTO and the marine tourism industry in Queensland have supported Reef Check Australia since its inception in 2001. We believe the project to be extremely valuable to provide us with information on the health of our dive sites. Reef Check Australia is a professionally run organisation that has achieved significant successes over the past number of years." Tony Baker, Chairman | Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators
The Australian Government lacks the capacity to effectively monitor the vast number of Australian coral reefs on the scale required to respond to climate change.
We can help. Our volunteer teams, in partnership with our operator supporters, can survey popular dive sites for a fraction of the cost of standard government-employed surveys. For each survey, our teams complete important assessments on the health of the reef. Coral reef health can be gauged by monitoring the following criteria:
1. Hard coral cover
2. Algae proliferation
3. Indicator invertebrate abundance
4. Coral damage & impacts
5. Indicator fish abundance
This information is collected through the following surveys:
Substrate
Four 20m survey sections are completed along a 100m line marked out with tape and a point sample survey of the ground below (classified as either hard coral, soft coral, algae, rock, sponge, and others) is taken every 50cm.
Invertebrate & Impact
On the same survey sections, surveyors complete U-shaped search patterns 2.5m each side of the transect line and record the number and size of indicator invertebrates (including crown-of-thorns starfish, sea cucumbers, anemones and sea urchin species) discovered. Any harmful impacts to coral (i.e. disease, drupella scars, anchor damage or bleaching) are recorded and photographs are taken for our database.
Fish
Along the same survey sections, a fish count through a 5m square tunnel is used to record the abundance and size of key indicator species, such as coral trout, butterflyfish, snapper and sweetlips.
Photo Transect
Finally, a visual record is captured at regular points along each survey section to provide a permanent record of the coral and substrate on the site. This information was previously collected by videography and stored in our data library. This record may be important for future, more detailed (species identification) analyses of the data at sites where interesting changes have been recorded by our volunteer researchers. See an example of a section of video survey below.