Integrated Reef Fish Monitoring Project (IMR)

Updated: 2025-01-29

The project focuses on monitoring reef fish assemblages in deep-water inter reef areas, inshore nursery grounds and fringing reefs of high continental islands. The surveys will first set monitoring baselines for offshore deep water inter-reefal fish communities beyond safe limits of SCUBA based surveys. Underwater Visual Census survey will occur on 8 island groups using transect based methods (Emslie & Cheal, 2018). Nursery seascapes will be surveyed with RUVS (non-baited BRUVS) and BRUVS to survey fishes various habitats (estuary, mangrove, seagrass, reef flat) in three seascape elements (coastal, inter-reef, and continental island). BRUVS and ROVs will be employed for data acquisition in three nodes, the northern, central and southern GBR. Sampling will be a spatially balanced design among different habitats (e.g. shoals, Halimeda banks, sponge gardens) as well as Marine Park zoning.