Compiling Biodiversity Inventories

We dive because we love fish or we love fish because we dive. How often have we flicked through a fish ID book left on the shelves of a liveaboard or dive resort? More pertinently, how often have we then forgotten the name of the fish specie?  Is there a point to remembering the fish’s name? How many recreational dives did you have before you could readily identify a Napoleon wrasse from a bumphead parrotfish, a sweetlip from a snapper?

While we don’t need to have the formal training of a marine biologist to appreciate the joys of recreational scuba diving, nonetheless, like visiting a terrestrial tourist site, it makes a huge difference to our enjoyment and memories if we knew more about what we are looking at. Fish ID surveys are thus an ideal way to marry scuba diving tourism with marine monitoring efforts, and in Australia, there are a few groups who use lay volunteer divers for these surveys. Find out for yourself the difference between passive and active learning by participating in your first fish identification survey with DiVo's expedition in collaboration with Reef Life Survey! At the same time, the data collated can provide useful information on the distribution and relative abundance of fishlife over areas and at frequencies that are beyond the resources of scientific and university dive teams.