Data from ten contributed datasets covering underwater visual fish surveys in Hawaii, the northern Line islands, Fiji, Samoa, the Solomon Islands and Wallis & Futuna have now been loaded into a standardised database. As a result, the database currently contains data for 330 stations, 1,808 sites and 5,581 samples, where samples refer to individual transects or point counts surveying either fish, benthos or both. The total underwater search area covered by fish samples is 2,018,284 square meters, equivalent to the size of about 1,345.5 Olympic-size swimming pools! These samples record information on 837,028 individual fish in 821 species and 243 genera, ranging in size from 1cm to 323cm. Additional datasets are being loaded into the database, so more updates will be posted in the future.

Many members of Pacific Reef Fish Collaboration attended the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, in July 2008. This gave us the opportunity to meet again, discuss progress on the database, and make plan for analyses, publications and funding. The symposium also saw the first public presentation of work emanating from the collaboration: Jana McPherson presented preliminary work on the use of distribution models as applied to PaReFiCo data to identify human-driven changes to Pacific reef fish distributions. To view an annotated copy of the presentation, click here: ICRS-talk-pdf

The collaboration's database by now encompasses more than 8,000 fish counts and benthic surveys from 83 islands in the following regions: the northwest Hawaiian atolls, the main Hawaiian Islands, the northern Line Islands, Tuamotu, American and Western Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, Wallis and Futuna, New Caledonia and the Solomon Islands. Collectively, these fish counts provide information on 1,702 species of fish in 646 genera. Three hundred and forty genera in the database are represented by a single species. Only 37 genera appear with 10 species or more. The most speciose genus is Apogon (43 species), followed by Chaetodon (35), Chromis (33), Epinephelus (31), and Gymnothorax (29). Data standardisation is ongoing and more information will be posted as details emerge.

On March 27th 2007 the collaboration lost one of its dear members. Ransom Myers, known to friends and colleagues as Ram, died in Halifax, Nova Scotia of a brain tumor at the age of 54. Ram was a vocal advocate for marine conservation. His research on cod, sea turtles, tuna, billfishes and sharks demonstrated to the world that overfishing is decimating marine life. He did not mince words about it, because he felt that if only engough people understood, the world could be made a better place. His humour, his energy and his brilliantly analytical mind will be sorely missed.

On August 7-9th, members of the Pacific Reef Fish Collaboration came together at Dalhousie University in Halifax to discuss the collaboration's goals and analytical approaches. The workshop began on Monday morning with a set of formal presentations, including:

• an introduction to the Census of Marine Life by Ron O'Dor and Julian Caley;
• information on efforts to quantify reef shark abundance globally by Camilo Mora;
• an overview of possible analyses by Michel Kulbicki and Nick Graham;
• a review of available measures of anthropogenic pressures by Jana McPherson;
• a few words on methods of data standardisation by Ram Myers; and
• an analysis of confounding factors in visual underwater fish counts by Michel Kulbicki.

These presentations were followed by two and a half days of discussion touching on topics as diverse as data formatting, standardisation and access, funding opportunities, this web site, and - most importantly - priority analyses. It was decided to focus on tackling five questions over the next year. These questions explore the interplay between fishing, diversity, reef connectivity, the reef fish assemblage structure and species vulnerability. The workshop ended Wednesday night with a tasty clam bake on Duncan's Cove beach.