Need Ideas on Research

[Aquabear]

Hi all,
I will be assisting in a study of the benthic zone, documenting the biology near shore on Long island. I have never run one before, I have very good nav skills which will be necessary and helpful in cloudy, dark, sediment filled water which I imagine most of my dives will be in.
PS: Diving about 15 years, about 150-170 dives under my belt, Advanced and Rescue diver. FUN FUN FUN!!! Shallow water depth 8' to max 20'. It's 3 plots, about one to 3 acres each plot- not confirmned yet what the town will give us.

What methods have been used to document benthic zone bio-animal n plant life. DO I take some stakes/poles and connect line to them and maybe make grids pattens with this??? Thoughts on using mu UW camera but with protective housing, and notes on slates to document whats down there. Got that idea from movies showing underwater archaeology - and yes James Bond's "For Your Eyes Only" too, wish I had the water clarity and the mermaid!

Any ideas? Please help, it's for this summer college project and I need to start my planning now. Want to have a basic written plan down on paper before our first group meeting May 7th'

Thanks to all your help in advanved.

Please feel free to PM for any private or classified info.

 

[diver257a]

Have a look at Reef Watch - A Community Environmental Monitoring Project Based in South Australia.

 

[Aquabear]

Thanks diver257a. Good info for me to read.

 

[smellzlikefish]

Benthic cover can be surveyed in a number of ways. You will probably want some 50 Meter transects for a start. Quadrats can be made using PVC with fishing weights to keep them on the bottom. At randomly chosen intervals along the transect, place the quadrat down and estimate the percentages of species of algae/benthic invertebrates inside the quadrat.

Another method uses pictures taken of a quadrat. Make the pictures as square with the quadrat as possible. Then you can upload the images into customized computer programs (available for free online) that will randomly select points within the pics. Then you go through and name whatever benthic life is covering the points the cpu generated. You can even make a quadrat out of PVC that supports your UW camera and takes perfect pictures of a square.

You can then go through and count the mobile benthic invertebrates of various taxa within 2-3 meters of the transect, looking carefully but uniformly for cryptic life.

All of the above methods can be done on snorkel. If you are proficient with towboards/GPS/boating you can utilize these by making passes at your acre in a grid fashion and marking down approximate percentages of what you see every minute/30 seconds, etc. I've even attached a camera to the front of a towboard and taken video that could later be analyzed. The possibilities are endless, depending on what you want to study.