Reef Life Survey
Film Clip Transcript
Reef Life Survey - Makes the underwater visible YouTube clip transcript
Reef life survey is a global
collaboration between marine scientists
management agencies and recreational
divers.
A key motivation of RLS is to make the
underwater world visible to the public
and especially to management agencies.
It's about providing the information
needed to better manage the marine
environment and also for scientists to
tackle questions that haven't been able
to be answered before.
So it's about finding the right divers, providing lots
of training and extending the scientific
team. There's a real focus on the detail
and quality of the data. We have a
growing number of locations around
Australia and the world where we're
gathering teams of our RLS divers for
annual monitoring, Rottnest island is a
really good example of this.
We started monitoring it in 2008 with
the support of the Rottnest Island
Authority. I've been monitoring every
year since. A key part of RLS is working
with management agencies. They help
direct where the data are needed most
for their purposes and then we provide
the data to them to help understand the
implications their management actions
better.
My name is Dr Tom Holmes and I
coordinate the marine monitoring program
through the marine science program.
Ecological programs generally speaking
have fairly tight budgetary constraints,
in what they tend they can operate, so ways
to get the biggest bang for your
buck in terms of what you're doing
really come into play.
RLS is an incredibly important tool,
particularly through strategies such as
adaptive management. You know long term
data sets play a very important role in
informing our management decisions that
we make. The Western Australian coast is
an incredibly diverse coastline and it covers a
massive area. Some of the techniques
that are used are used on the national
and international scale.
So the scale at which they operate over here in Western
Australia really fits in beautifully. It
provides information that's very
complementary. The inclusion of
scientists and researchers within ReefLifeSurvey
really places the emphasis on
quality control.
Having those people
involved in there really adds that
filter and helps process the data that comes
out the other side. It leaves us with a
whole lot more confidence in what the
information is actually telling us.
This is like my home turf. I have dived here quite
a lot. My name's Dan Holmes I've been
volunteering with the Reef Life survey
foundation for 10 years now. RLS is a huge
part of my life now. There's probably not a
week that goes by where I'm not involved
in something to do with RLS. What I
got out of it most at the beginning was
was that connection with the environment
So it's about finding the right divers, providing lots
of training and extending the scientific
team. There's a real focus on the detail
and quality of the data. We have a
growing number of locations around
Australia and the world where we're
gathering teams of our RLS divers for
annual monitoring, Rottnest island is a
really good example of this.
We started monitoring it in 2008 with
the support of the Rottnest Island
Authority. I've been monitoring every
year since. A key part of RLS is working
with management agencies. They help
direct where the data are needed most
for their purposes and then we provide
the data to them to help understand the
implications their management actions
better.
This is like my home turf. I have dived here quite
a lot. My name's Tom Holmes I've been
volunteering with the Reef Life survey
foundation for 10 years now. RLS is a huge
part of my life now. There's probably not a
week that goes by where I'm not involved
in something to do with RLS. What I
got out of it most at the beginning was
was that connection with the environment
and actually beginning to understand
what was happening around me.
We had a marine heatwave back in 2010
and 2011 and we saw a big a ecological
change here. A lot of fishes were lost
but it was really interesting to be here
at that period of time and see that
change, not just in terms of what I could
physically see when I was diving, but
the data that was coming out of the
program would actually show it in a
quantitative way.
[Music]
I cannot imagine I'd still be in the
program ten years on unless I knew that
my daughter was going to be contributing
to a significant meaningful outcome in
terms of managing and conserving the
environment
RLS has kind of facilitated a network of
citizen scientists that are becoming
professional scientists.