West Hawaii Coastal Fish, Invertebrate, and Benthic Surveys

West Hawaii coastal waters are monitored through diver surveys at 26 permanent sites. The dataset includes fish and urchin counts from 100 m² belt transects, benthic cover analysis from stratified point counts on images, and targeted coral bleaching assessments from 2015. Data collection spans from 2003 to 2017, with benthic analysis transitioning from CPCe to CoralNet software.

Use Cases

• Tracking long-term changes in fish and urchin populations based on standardized transect surveys.
• Analyzing shifts in benthic cover composition using point-count data from quadrat images.
• Assessing the severity and spatial extent of the 2015 coral bleaching event in West Hawaii.
• Calibrating or validating remote sensing or computer vision models for benthic habitat classification.

Strengths

• Standardized methodology across 26 permanent monitoring sites provides consistency for time-series analysis.
• Benthic data includes detailed taxonomic identification from 20 stratified random points per 0.30 m² image.
• Explicit temporal coverage from 2003 to 2017, with a documented response to a major 2015 bleaching event.

Limitations

• Key metadata is missing or conflicting: row counts, column names, and specific license are unknown across all sources.
• Update timestamps conflict between platforms (2017 vs. 2026), creating uncertainty about data currency.
• The benthic survey frequency is typically triennial, which may limit annual resolution for some analyses.

Provenance

Source

NOAA_NCEI

Collection Method

In-situ diver surveys for fish/invertebrates and image-based point counts for benthic cover.

Time Range

2003-03-01 to 2017-03-01

Freshness

Last updated date conflicts: one source lists 2017-03-01, another lists 2026-03-05.

Geography

West coast of Hawaii, Hawaiian Islands, Central Pacific Ocean