Dear Romain, according to Piazzi et al. 2014, for detecting

effects of impacts on Mediterranean coralligenous

habitats by means of non-destrucitve methods (photographic sampling) a good compromise between habitat conservation, scientific validity and time/cost effort requirements seems to be the use of photographic samples larger than 1800 cm2, with a number of replicates larger than 10, by using taxa/morphological groups as descriptors and planning sampling designs with a high replication at the small spatial scales. This study was carried out in the Tuscany region (Italy) on coralligenous assemblages of vertical rocky bottoms at 30-35m depth; however, preliminary study seems to indicate that th esame approach could be applied to the whole coralligenous community (fauna and algal components). You can find a more complete frame of  the reasons why this type of sampling seems to be the best in terms of costs and information quality in Piazzi L., Balata D., Cecchi E., Gennaro P., Serena F. (2014). Effectiveness of different investigation procedures in detecting anthropogenic impacts on coralligenous assemblages. Scientia Marina, 78(3):319-328  doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/scimar.03989.28A

I hope to you useful.... :-) ....all my best 

Paola Gennaro

Hello Roman,

I Love Paola's paper, if your substrate is "coralligeous" seems to me that it is definitely a method you might want to consider. The only problem will be Identifying the smaller benthos to species (such as polychaetes, amphipods and others).

Another method you could use, is one that Professor Jim Thomas in Nova University (south Florida) was developing with one of his Graduate students and it is modified  Hester Dendy approach, Modified for the substrate they were using was a Industrial type sponge (has lots of nooks and crannies for smaller benthos to colonize... If you are interested I can put you in touch with Professor Thomas.

Have a look at some of the methods used by G.Edgar and N. Barrett,(University of Tasmania) numerous publications, and some the associated work of Reeflife survey.

http://reeflifesurvey.com/

Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology

Volume 242, Issue 1, 15 September 1999, Pages 107–144

Effects of the declaration of marine reserves on Tasmanian reef fishes, invertebrates and plants

Graham J Edgar

Neville S Barrett

For the Caribbean, I consider the AGRRA (Atlantic and Gulf Reef Rapid Reef Assessment Protocol (AGRRA Protocol) one of the most rapid, relevant and cost efficient one. It contains a complete selection of key t benthic indicators (for stony coral cover and size, macroalgae, Diadema sea urchin, disease, bottom relief, etc.) and has been and is still currently extensively used around Cuba.. There are two versions (v.4 and v.5) of this protocol with different degrees of detail with regard to macroalgae assessment)., I is complemented by a rapid fish community assessment protocol (Consult www.agrra.org/method/methodhome.htm)

Hi Romain,

It depends on the system/scale you wish to investigate, the resolution you’re after (i.e., taxonomic) and the money you have. I agree that the papers above are a great, and also suggest having a look at the following for efficient- (i.e. cheap) approaches:

Small scale - these refs describe validated methods for quantifying benthic habitats and associated biota - that can be up-scaled to answer broader, even biogeographic questions.

Fowler-Walker, M., Connell, S., Gillanders, B., 2005. Variation at local scales need not impede tests for broader scale patterns. Mar. Biol. 147(3), 823-831.

Connell, S.D., Irving, A.D., 2008. Integrating ecology with biogeography using landscape characteristics: a case study of subtidal habitat across continental Australia. Journal of Biogeography 35, 1608-1621.

Medium scale - a good and cheap option to assess catchment-scale patterns of community structure (e.g., SAV and habitat-forming animals) are replicate 100m transects (done on SCUBA) – where changes in species are recorded at 1m resolution. This enables estimates of overall % covers + size frequency distributions of habitat patches, that can be repeated easily/and often. see;

Gorman, D., Russell, B.D., Connell, S.D., 2009. Land-to-sea connectivity: linking human-derived terrestrial subsidies to subtidal habitat change on open rocky coasts. Ecological Applications 19(5), 1114-1126.

Broad-scale - if you plan to look at regional or biogeographical patterns that involve modelling approaches (e.g., SDMs) it may be worth looking at ‘snap-shot data’ derived from ROV or drop camera video, that are then ground truthed with biomass samples - see;

Gorman, D., Bajjouk, T., Populus, J., Vasquez, M., Ehrhold, A., 2013. Modeling kelp forest distribution and biomass along temperate rocky coastlines. Mar. Biol. 160(2), 309-325.

According to answers by D. Gorman and G. Schmitt, it depends on a lot of factor. I can only suggest you another protocol for rocky substrates. If you want to do start a long term program monitoring you may decide to fix sites and area and replicate survey almost one time per year (usually it is sufficient). If you want to do a short term study you cuold consider season and other factors. Photographic method to acheive data is very useful. In order to obtain biomass data particularly for animal benthos You can also consider to make visul census on transect (e.g. for megabenthos and fishes) and scraping (e.g. for macroinvertebrates).

The visual methods described above apply to megabenthos and possible fish (as an indicator), but with video, scuba transects etc. you are likely to miss out on a whole lot of cryptic and small species. Unless of course you're actually referring to corals specifically as the benthic organisms of interest, in which case you don't really need to worry about meio/macrofauna so much and visual transects would probably be the most cost effective method. But for overall monitoring of environmental status it could be argued that more healthy your area is in terms of living hard substrate, 3D complexity and spatial heterogeneity more opportunity there is for colonization and therefore more diverse your benthic community is likely to be. 

Hi, you may have a look at the German Marine Monitoring Programme.

http://www.blmp-online.de/Seiten/Monitoringhandbuch.htm

Evaluation of stress index, where both opportunistic and sensitive species are present in the matrix