URG has several members who are certified for Reef Life Surveys. These are the most challenging, but also the most rewarding surveys that you can do as a citizen scientist. They follow a strict protocol, gathering fish and invertebrate data over a 50 m transect. Divers identify species, abundance and size class for every fish and most invertebrates in the transect. Every time you do a reef life survey you learn new species, behaviours or relationships in the ecosystem. Best of all, the data is gathered in a large global database that is used by scientists to analyse the health of our marine ecosystems and has contributed to several high profile scientific papers.

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Reef Life Survey training is free for all URG members who can commit to conducting the survey several days a year. We mainly do the survey around Sydney but also travel to Jervis Bay, Western Australia and Lord Howe Island in Queensland.

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Learn more about Reef Life Survey.

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