Cataloguing and monitoring changes in Arctic marine biodiversity through SCUBA diving

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1 Howe Sound Research and Conservation, Coastal Ocean Research Institute, Ocean Wise, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
2 Software Development, Python Systems Corp., Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.26850v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Bioinformatics, Ecology, Marine Biology, Taxonomy
Keywords
bioinformatics, data mining, roving diver, software development, ecology, taxonomy
Copyright
© 2018 Gibbs et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Gibbs DM, Gibbs CJ, Schultz JA. 2018. Cataloguing and monitoring changes in Arctic marine biodiversity through SCUBA diving. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26850v1

Abstract

Since 2014 divers from Ocean Wise have been SCUBA diving in the Cambridge Bay, Nunavut area collecting data on fishes, invertebrates and marine plants at numerous sites. For each dive a file is created that catalogues the species found and a rough abundance of that species. These files accumulate over time and are searchable by location, year, year and month, month, species and a number of other criteria with custom software created for this purpose. Relationships between species is automatic with the searches. In addition to the species catalogue that began in 2014, data has been scrounged from previous collecting trips by staff and personal dive logs before 2014, allowing for comparison between Pond Inlet, Resolute and Cambridge Bay. We were able to flag a potential decline in one species in 2017 thanks to our previous data. Our goal is to work to cooperatively with others diving in the Arctic to grow this database through photography and dive records. At this point we have 149 dives/records and 279 species recorded. The database is used to support the Nearshore Ecological Surveys and the Arctic Marine Ecological Benchmarking Program reports. In addition to biodiversity data, temperature, salinity, pH and dissolved oxygen are also collected while in the area.

Author Comment

This is a preprint submission to PeerJ Preprints.