FISHWATCH
is a project studying marine fish behavior, movements, and species
groupings in continental shelf waters off the coast of the state of
Georgia. Collaborating in this study are the South Carolina Department
of Natural Resources, Marine Resources Division, the Skidaway Institute
of Oceanography, and the US Naval TACTS program. The study is funded
in part by the Office of Naval Research, National Ocean Partnership
Program. The study is conducted with an observational system of 6
underwater cameras that monitor the activities around an artificial
reef habitat. The artificial reef consists of concrete pyramids that
were deployed in the spring of 1999. Since then, extensive invertebrate
growth has occurred on these pyramids. These artificial reefs attract
fish typically found in reef habitats, and the cameras monitor their
activity. The video gathered is in the form of 10 second clips. The
clips are in black and white and the quality is limited by the factors
present on site, including water turbidity, fish activity, time of
day, and surface conditions.
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The FISHWATCH
project has both educational and research objectives. The main goal
of this education section is to make the research information that
is being collected available to students, teachers, and the general
public in a clear, and interesting format and accompany the video
clips with information regarding the species and their behaviors.
Using the video archive as a resource, teachers and other educators
can create activities and lessons for students to learn more about
assemblages of fish that inhabit regional reef ecosystems of the South
Atlantic Bight continental shelf.
Natural reefs of the continental shelf are
made up of outcrops of rocky ridges and geological structures that
exist throughout the region (more can be found about the geology of
fish habitats by linking to Project Oceanica web site). Because of
the rocky bottom and warm Gulf Stream water, these hard bottom reefs
and oceanographic features support assemblages of reef fishes. The
oceanography of this region, which plays a critical part in the lives
of reef fishes, is being monitored by the SABSOON and SEACOOS projects,
and can linked to from the Fish Watch site. The fish inhabitants of
reefs on the continental shelf of the Southeastern United States are
made up of “resident” and “transient” species,
whose need for food, shelter and environmental conditions dictate
their permanent (resident) or temporary (transient) presence at any
time of year. For an article on the status of fisheries resources
in the world's oceans please visit the website of The
World Fisheries.
The video collected in this study is organized by species' presence
on the reef (residents / common visitors / uncommon visitors). Some
information regarding species' physical and behavioral characteristics
accompanies the video clips. For more in-depth descriptions of the
species of fish seen here, as well as many others, refer to the sites
SAFMC.net
and FishBase.org.
This research and educational effort is part of the SouthEast Atlantic
Coastal Ocean Observing System (SEA-COOS,
www.seacoos.org) under the South Atlantic Bight Synoptic Ocean
Observing Network (SABSOON,
http://www.skio.peachnet.edu/research/sabsoon/). The work is funded
by the U.S. Office of Naval Research. Charlie Barans of South Carolina
Marine Resources Division is the Principal Investigator. The fishwatch
educational web presence thanks to Project
Oceanica, College of Charleston, for any question please contact
Dewey Golub. For further information
or suggestions please contact; fishwatch@dnr.mrd.state.sc.us
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