REEF is basically a volunteery service for citizens to go out into the ocean and survey what they saw. The mission of REEF is to conserve the marine environment and to educate marine enthusiasts so that they can become active scientists or stewards in the marine environment. In other words, their mission is to link the diving community with scientists so that they can go out in the field and fill out serveys to help preserve marine life.
My class and I also took part in the REEF survey. Our study took place in South Kihei at the Fish Pond. The Fish Pond is an area that is protected because it is currently reconstructing a Loko Kuapa. To do our survey, we used a mask and a snorkle so that we can see and breathe underneath the water, our survey consists of water prff paper and pencil, and we brought a water proof identification sheet with us in the water in case we couldn't identify a fish. To do the survey you must group the fish in according to how many you saw. If you record any fish sightings during your swim, you must fill out another sheet to identify the exact type of fish you saw.
When we my class took the survey, the condition of the water was very poor. The water was very murky and you couldnt see anything past a foot in the water. The poor conditions of the water resulted in seeing no fish. The reason the water's condition was so poor was because of all of the rain we had recently. The rain causes run off into the fish pond, then all of the mud and junk in the water kills the algae because the sun cant penetrae through the water and algae gets it's food from the sun. Then the fish who eat the algae starves and the fish who eat those fish die from lack of food. The run off effected the whole entire ecosystem within the fish pond and that would explain why we could see any fish, because most of them were dead and the visability was poor. Although i didn't record any data, it is still useful information because it tells us that there is a shortage of fish at the Fish Pond, so this makes no data, useful data.
For more information on Reef, go to this website- http://www.reef.org/
