Fish assemblages in southern California kelp forests.

This is a point file of fish assemblages calculated from diver surveys in kelp forests in Southern California. Visual census data was combined for two separate southern California datasets. The Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO) provided information collected at 15 sites, and Vantuna Research Group (VRG) at 29 sites. Visual transect surveys were completed by SCUBA divers along the bottom of the kelp forest. The VRG dataset provided fish counts along 2m x 60m transects which were subsequently averaged for comparison with the PISCO dataset. The PISCO dataset provided mean counts along a 2m x 30m transect which were doubled before combining with the VRG data. Fish that were not present in at least 5% of the trawls were removed from this analysis, resulting in a site by species matrix of 44 sites and 45 species. Site groups were calculated using the Bray-Curtis dissimilarity coefficient with average means clustering