Coral reef benthic and fish surveys in the Chagos Archipelago

Surveys of 18 reef sites around the northern atolls of the Chagos Archipelago, British Indian Ocean Territory. Benthic cover of corals and other organisms were quantified along with the abundance diversity and size of reef associated fishes.

    Data Record Details
    Data record related to this publication Coral reef benthic and fish surveys in the Chagos Archipelago
    Data Publication title Coral reef benthic and fish surveys in the Chagos Archipelago
  • Description

    Surveys of 18 reef sites around the northern atolls of the Chagos Archipelago, British Indian Ocean Territory. Benthic cover of corals and other organisms were quantified along with the abundance diversity and size of reef associated fishes.

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    • Descriptor

      These surveys were conducted in 2010 by Nick Graham and Morgan Pratchett of James Cook University. At each of the 18 sites 4 replicate 50m transects were surveyed at both 9m and 3m depth. Coral and other benthic cover were surveyed using point intercept methodology, while fish were surveyed using 50*5m belt transect UVC. The location has been largely unfished and uninhabited since the early 1970’s. The data are being used to make comparisons to other reef systems across the Indian Ocean to assess this fairly pristine site to more degraded reefs elsewhere.

    • Descriptor type Full
    • Descriptor
    • Descriptor type Full
  • Data type dataset
  • Keywords
    • coral reef ecology
    • reef fish assemblages
    • coral bleaching
    • marine wilderness areas
    • ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
  • Funding source
  • Research grant(s)/Scheme name(s)
  • Research themes
    Tropical Ecosystems, Conservation and Climate Change
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    Temporal (time) coverage
  • Start Date 2010/02/10
  • End Date 2010/03/10
  • Time Period
    Spatial (location) coverage
  • Locations
    • Chagos Archipelago, Central Indian Ocean, British Indian Ocean Territory.
    Data Locations

    Type Location Notes
    Physical Location ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies James Cook University Townsville Queensland 4811 Australia Phone: 61 7 4781 4000 Fax: 61 7 4781 6722
    The Data Manager is: Nick Graham
    College or Centre
    Access conditions Conditional: Contact researchdata@jcu.edu.au to request access to this data.
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  • Related publications
      Name Graham, N.A.J., Purkis, S.J., and Harris, A. (2009) Diurnal, land-based predation on shore crabs by moray eels in the Chagos Archipelago. Coral Reefs, 28 (2). p. 397. ISSN 1432-0975
    • URL http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/5097/
    • Notes
    • Name Pratchett, M.S., Graham, N.A.J., Sheppard, C.R.C., and Mayes, B. (2010) Are infestations of Cymo melanodactylus killing Acropora cytherea in the Chagos archipelago? Coral Reefs, 29 (4). p. 941. ISSN 1432-0975
    • URL http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/15547/
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    The data will be licensed under CC BY-NC: Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 AU
  • Other Licence
  • Statement of rights in data Once data access has been obtained, this dataset is covered by the CC-BY-NC AU licence.
  • Data owners
      James Cook University
    Citation Graham, Nick; Pratchett, Morgan (2012): Coral reef benthic and fish surveys in the Chagos Archipelago. James Cook University. https://research.jcu.edu.au/data/published/4d49d511ad6cba07c8fe71102d500e1c