RLS Annual Report 2016

• 2016 saw 1,626 surveys completed across 8 different countries, as well as Antarctica, from 71 trained RLS volunteer divers
• RLS welcomed 18 newly trained divers, taking the total number of trained divers up to 286
• RLS now has over 9,276 surveys from over 2,500 sites in 50 different countries
• 112 new fish species recorded and 137 new invertebrate species were recorded

Cinner J.E. et al (2016). Bright spots among the world’s coral reefs. Nature 535: 416-419.

Duffy, J.E., Lefcheck, J.S., Stuart-Smith, R.D., Navarrete, S.A., and Edgar, G.J. (2016). Biodiversity enhances reef fish biomass and resistance to climate change PNAS 6230–6235.

Edgar, G.J., Bates, A.E., Bird, T., Jones, A.H., Kininmonth, S., Stuart-Smith, R.D., Webb, T.J. (2016). New approaches to marine conservation through scaling up of ecological data. Annual Review of Marine Science 8: 435-461.

Mellin, C., Mouillot, D., Kulbicki, M., McClanahan, T.R., Vigliola, L., Bradshaw, C.J.A., Brainard, R.E., Chabanet, P., Edgar, G.J., Fordham, D.A., Friedlander, A.M., Parravicini, V., Sequeira, A.M.M., Stuart-Smith, R.D., Wantiez, L., Caley, M.J. (2016). Humans and seasonal climate variability threaten large-bodied, small-ranging fishes on coral reefs. Nature Communications 7: 10491.

Mourier, J., Maynard, J., Parravicini, V., Ballesta, L., Clua, E., Domeier, M.L., Planes, S. (2016) Extreme inverted trophic pyramid of reef sharks supported by spawning groupers. Current Biology 26: 2011-2016.

Stuart-Smith R.D., Edgar, G.J., Barrett, N.S., Kininmonth, S.J., and Bates, A.E. (2015). Thermal biases and vulnerability to warming in the world’s marine fauna. Nature 528 88-92.

Sunday, J. M., Pecl, G. T., Frusher, S., Hobday, A. J., Hill, N., Holbrook, N. J., Edgar, G. J., Stuart-Smith, R., Barrett, N., Wernberg, T., Watson, R. A., Smale, D. A., Fulton, E. A., Slawinski, D., Feng, M., Radford, B. T., Thompson, P. A. and Bates, A. E. (2015), Species traits and climate velocity explain geographic range shifts in an ocean-warming hotspot. Ecology Letters, 18: 944–953.

Althaus F, Hill N, Ferrari R, Edwards L, Przeslawski R, Schönberg CHL, et al. (2015) A Standardised Vocabulary for Identifying Benthic Biota and Substrata from Underwater Imagery: The CATAMI Classification Scheme. PLoS ONE 10(10): e0141039.

Soler G.A., Edgar G.J., Thomson R.J., Kininmonth S., Campbell S.J., Dawson T.P., et al. (2015) Reef Fishes at All Trophic Levels Respond Positively to Effective Marine Protected Areas. PLoS ONE 10(10): e0140270

Stuart-Smith, R.D., Edgar, G.J., Shaw, I.V. Tropical Marine Fishes of Australia. (2015) Reed New Holland Publishers, 479pp.

Edgar, G.J. Tropical Marine Wildlife of Australia. (2017) Reed New Holland Publishers, 528pp.