Santa Barbara Channel Marine BON: Integrated fish

The Santa Barbara Channel MBON tracks long-term patterns in species
abundance and diversity. This dataset contains counts of fish
(including cryptic fish, which are deliberately sought out) produced
by integrating data from four contributing projects working in the
kelp forests of the Santa Barbara Channel, USA.

This dataset includes three entities, two data tables and R code. The
main data table contains counts of organisms, the area over which that
number was counted and the height above the bottom. Data were
collected by human observation (divers using SCUBA) during regular
surveys. The column labeled “count” records the number of organisms
found in each plot/transect at a given timestamp.. A second data table
contains place names and geolocation for sampling sites. Information
is sufficient for the calculation of fish density, which is left to
the user. Sample R-code is included (third entity) to illustrate
generation of a basic table of areal density by taxa and sampling
site. See Methods for information on integration and data processing

The four contributing projects are two research projects: the Santa
Barbara Coastal LTER (SBC LTER) and the Partnership for
Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO), and the kelp
forest monitoring program of the Santa Barbara Channel National Park,
and the San Nicolas Island monitoring program supported by USGS.
Together, these projects have recorded data for more than 200 species
at approximately 100 sites on both the mainland coast and on the Santa
Barbara Channel Islands. Sampling began in 1982 and is ongoing.