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. 2014 May 27;1:140007. doi: 10.1038/sdata.2014.7

Table 2. Key to the data fields in the Reef Life Survey reef fish dataset.

Data field Description Values
SiteCode Identifier of unique geographical coordinates Usually 2–3 letters followed by numeric string
Site Descriptive name of the site
SiteLat Latitude of site (WGS84) Decimal degrees
SiteLong Longitude of site (WGS84) Decimal degrees
Country Country (or largely-autonomous state)
Ecoregion Location within the Marine Ecoregions of the World provided in Spalding et al.13
Realm Biogeographic realm as classified in the Marine Ecoregions of the World13
SurveyID Identifier of individual 50 m transects Numeric string
Depth Mean depth of transect line as recorded on dive computer (note: this does not account for tide or deviations from the mean value as a consequence of imperfect tracking of the depth contour along the bottom) metres
SurveyDate Date of survey (dd-month-yy)
Diver Initials of the diver who collected the datum Two to four letter unique identifier
Taxon Species name, corrected for recent taxonomic changes and grouping of records not at species level
Family Taxonomic family
Block Identifies which 5 m wide block (of two) within each complete transect (surveyID) Values=1 (block on deeper/offshore side of transect line), 2 (block on shallower/inshore side)
Total Total abundance for record on that block, transect, site, date combination Numeric string