Parrotfish species, density counts, and fish length from field-video surveys in Palau, Yap, the Federated States of Micronesia, Majuro, and Kiritimati from 2017 to 2019

Abstract

As part of reef composition survey in Palau (7°30' N, 134°30' E) and Yap (9°32' N, 138°7' E), herbivorous parrotfish were identified to species and analyzed for size from video transects. Survey depth was between 2 to 5 meters due to an interest in determining the potential of shallow-water reef carbonate production. Fishes were videoed along six, 30 m long by 4 m wide transects. The herbivorous parrotfishes in the videos were subsequently analyzed for size (cm) and identity. Surveys in Palau were conducted from June 2 to June 24, 2017, and from June 25 to July 6, 2017 in Yap.

In Pohnpei (6.2°N, 158.2°E) and Kosrae (5.3°N, 162.9°E) FSM, six 10-meter transects were used to measure the benthic composition for every centimeter, at each site of 48 sites in 2018. Herbivorous parrotfishes were videoed and identified to species and their estimated length was recorded to the nearest cm along six transects, each of which was 30 m long by 4 m wide.

In Majuro (7.0667° N, 171.2667° E) and Kiritimati (1.8721° N, 157.4278° W), a stratified random sampling approach was used to survey the reefs in 2019. At both locations, the sites were stratified as either (i) outer reefs, or (ii) patch reefs in lagoons. The number of sites sampled per habitat varied according to the area of available habitat at each location. Surveys were focused between 2–5 m.

For a complete list of measurements, refer to the full dataset description in the supplemental file 'Dataset_description.pdf'. The most current version of this dataset is available at: https://www.bco-dmo.org/dataset/734979