Table 1.
List of underwater visual census (UVC) methods commonly used to quantify reef fish assemblages, their target taxa, associated sampling area, biases associated with movement pattern of the observer, and their principal reported strengths and weaknesses as evaluated in the literature.
Fig 1.
Relative utilization of the two most dominant underwater visual census (UVC) methods (stationary point count versus belt transect) by survey region.
The size of the circle corresponds to the number of projects reported on from each study region, with the proportion of each method contributing to this overall total (n = 298) shown.
Fig 2.
Global distribution of underwater visual census (UVC) methods used to quantify reef fish assemblages.
The size of the circle corresponds to the number of projects reported on from each study region, with the proportion of each method contributing to the overall total (n = 426) shown.
Table 2.
Underwater visual census (UVC) methods used to quantify reef fish assemblages.
The count per method is enumerated for the entire 426 projects reported on by the 180 survey respondents. Note that the five most commonly reported methods represent over 90% of the total responses. ‘Other’ category includes all rarely employed methods noted by only one respondent.