Benthic images collected at coral reef sites in Batangas, Philippines in 2012 and 2015

Photographs of the seafloor were collected during benthic photo-quadrat surveys conducted by the NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) in 2012 and 2015 along transects at fixed climate survey sites located on hard bottom shallow water (< 15 m) habitats in the Philippines. Climate sites were established by CREP to assess multiple features of the coral reef environment (in addition to the data described herein) over time. The photographs can be accessed online via the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Ocean Archive. The imagery from 2015 has been quantitatively analyzed using image analysis software to derive an estimate of percent benthic cover (archived separately).

The Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) at NOAA Fisheries is conducting in-situ climate monitoring across the U.S. Pacific Islands Region. Climate monitoring provides a comprehensive view of climate change impacts on coral reef ecosystems and helps identify areas of resilience and vulnerability. The key indicators used to identify and monitor climate-driven trends include 1) thermal stress caused by changes in sea temperature, 2) ocean acidification resulting from changes in carbonate chemistry, and 3) ecological impacts by collecting data on coral growth rates and community structure to understand the impacts of thermal stress and ocean acidification on the ecosystem.

This particular dataset for the Philippines is part of a 3-year project ("Climate, Biodiversity and Fisheries in the Coral Triangle: Embracing the E in Ecosystem Approaches to Fisheries Management") implemented by CREP. This project was funded by NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Regional Development Mission Asia (RDMA) as part of the U.S. Coral Triangle Initiative, with additional support from the Coral Triangle Support Partnership and USAID Philippines.

The goal of the project was to build on CREP's expertise to provide tools and information about climate change, ocean acidification, and their impacts on biodiversity and fisheries that could inform and be incorporated into an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management (EAFM) for the Philippines. CREP worked with local governments, communities, and NGOs to build science capacity by establishing robust observing capabilities and providing hands-on training to initiate collection of climate science information for the Verde Island Passage in the Philippines that can be used toward adaptive EAFM.

The NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) traveled to the Verde Island Passage region of the Philippines in 2012 to deploy moored oceanographic (subsurface temperature recorders [STRs]) and ecological (calcification accretion units [CAUs] and autonomous reef monitoring structures [ARMS]) instrumentation, to collect surface and bottom water samples, and to conduct benthic photo-quadrat surveys, which included the collection of benthic images; in 2013 to collect additional water samples; and again in 2015 to recover the instrumentation and to collect another round of water samples and benthic images. All activities were conducted by SCUBA divers at five locations in the municipalities of Mabini and Tingloy, including Batong Buhay, Koala Reserve Area, Arthur's Reef, Twin Rocks, and Batalang Bato. At each of the five locations, a shallow and deep survey site was established for a total of 10 survey sites.

Raw data include approximately 30 benthic photographs per survey site. Included in the archive package is a list of survey sites, including site id, location (latitude/longitude), and survey date, where photoquads were collected. The file naming convention for each photo/image is [SITE]_[YEAR]_[TRANSECT]_[PHOTO_NUMBER].JPG (for example: KOA-02_2015_A_01.JPG).

While every effort has been made to ensure that these data are accurate and reliable within the limits of the current state of the art, NOAA cannot assume liability for any damages caused by errors or omissions in the data, nor as a result of the failure of the data to function on a particular system. NOAA makes no warranty, expressed or implied, nor does the fact of distribution constitute such a warranty.

Mabini and Tingloy in Batangas, Philippines

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NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) Data Sharing Recommendations, version 9.0 updated August 12, 2015:

CREP welcomes the opportunity to collaborate on research issues contributing to the scientific basis for better management of marine ecosystems. CREP has a very diverse set of field activities that generates large volumes of data using an array of data collection protocols.

The following recommendations are for your consideration as you use this data:

1) Data analyses should take all field exigencies into account. The most effective way to do this would be active collaboration with CREP principal investigators.

2) In all presentations, product releases, or publications using data generated by CREP, proper acknowledgement of both CREP and the individuals responsible for data collection is expected. Citing the DOI (if available) is preferred, a non-DOI example is listed below.

3) If you collect or generate data for the same study areas, CREP requests that you share relevant information on complimentary data collections.

4) Those receiving data are strongly urged to inform the CREP Data Management Team of any errors and discrepancies that are discovered during the course of using these data. They are further urged to bring to the attention of the Team all problems and difficulties encountered in using these data. This information is necessary in order to improve the collections and to facilitate more efficient and economical data processing and retrieval. The users are asked to supply copies of any missing data that may be located, and to provide information as to significant subsets and special aggregations of data that are developed in using the material provided.

Example citation:

"This publication makes use of data products provided by the Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP), Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC), National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with funding support from the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) and the United States Agency for International Development. The analysis and interpretations presented here are solely that of the current authors.”

Data can be accessed online via the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Ocean Archive.

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Please cite NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) when using the data.

Suggested citation:

Coral Reef Ecosystem Program; Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (2017). Benthic images collected at coral reef sites in Batangas, Philippines in 2012 and 2015. NOAA's National Center for Environmental Information, https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/inport/item/45820

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PIFSC network/file system:

2012: \\picmakai\general\Cruise\CruiseData\CTI_VIP_SBP1201\OPTICAL\REA\CLIMATE\

2015: \\picmakai\general\Cruise\CruiseData\CTI_VIP_MP1507\OPTICAL\REA\CLIMATE\

Handheld GPS units were used to mark site locations.

Survey transects were appropriately marked to allow direct, site-level temporal comparisons.

Complete; photoquads were taken at all sites surveyed.

Only sites classified as climate stations / permanent sites were surveyed.

Survey methods were consistent across all sites.

Benthic images and the file structure are quality controlled by CREP personnel before they are migrated and integrated into CREP's master optical directory on the PIFSC network.

NOAA IRC and NOAA Fisheries ITS resources and assets.

Benthic photographs were collected for climate survey sites at pre-defined points along the transect. The photos are collected for the purpose of deriving benthic cover percentages using image analysis software, though, not all photo sets are analyzed. In the case where photographs were collected during both the initial deployment and final recovery missions, typically only the most recent set of photographs are analyzed for benthic cover.