GVI Mexico Coral Reef Monitoring

Lluvia Soto

GVI working in partnership with Amigos de Sian Kaan (ASK), have been monitoring Mexico’s Caribbean reefs since 2003. Data are collected at Pez Maya (20.00222 degrees N, 87.28624 degrees W) and Punta Gruesa (19.00865 degrees N, 87.58977 degrees W) to support the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System project and provide information to the National Parks Commission (CONANP). These data are now being used by GVI and its partners to promote the management of the reserve’s resources in a more sustainable manner.

The objective of this monitoring program is the creation of a database that will help to assess the health of the Mexican-Caribbean reefs.

We dive regularly and all incidences of target species are recorded and the global positioning system (GPS) coordinates are known from our monitoring program.

[2020-09-30] The following invalid species names were corrected according to the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS).
Turtles: Testudines (173749) => Testudines (948936)

[UPDATE] 2017 Jan - Mar data were added on 2017-04-10.
[UPDATE] 2016 Jul - Dec data were added on 2016-12-14.
[UPDATE] Coordinates for some sites were corrected on 2016-09-14 affecting more than 500 records.
[UPDATE] 2016 Jan - Jun data were added on 2016-07-15.
[UPDATE] 2015 Jan - Jun data were added on 2015-06-30.
[UPDATE] 2014 Jul - Dec data were added on 2015-01-12.
[UPDATE] 2014 Jan - Jun data were added on 2014-07-09.
[UPDATE] 2012 and 2013 data were added on 2014-02-07.

Overview

This section explains attributes included in the original dataset. OBIS-SEAMAP restricts the attributes available to the public to date/time, lat/lon and species names/counts only. Should you need other attributes described here, you are encouraged to contact the data provider.

Attributes described below represent those in the original dataset provided by the provider.
Only minimum required attributes are visible and downloadable online. Other attributes may be obtained upon provider's permission.

Attributes in dataset

Attribute (table column)	Description
oid	Unique ID number (generated by OBIS-SEAMAP)
year	Year of observation
obs_date	Observed date
obs_time	Observation time in Eastern Standard Time (time was not recorded before 2013)
sp_group	Taxon group
sp_obs	Species observed
sp_tsn	Taxonomic Serial Number added by OBIS-SEAMAP
species	Species observed
obs_count	Group size (in some cases the average of the minimum and maximum estimate was used)
location	study site
longitude	Longitude in decimal degrees
latitude	Latitude in decimal degrees
latitude_old	definition not provided
longitude_old	definition not provided
size_s	Size in original text
size	Size in meters unless otherwise noted
depth_s	Estimated depth of the animal in meters in original text
depth	Estimated depth of the animal in meters unless otherwise noted
observer	Observer name
comments	Comments
tprecision	Temporal precision
geom	Geometry field added by OBIS-SEAMAP