Benthic community data from towed-diver surveys around Jarvis Island

Benthic community data collected via towed-diver surveys in March – April of 2006, 2008 and 2010 for Jarvis Island. Divers were towed with instrumented boards at ~3 km h-1 suspended ~1 m above the benthos at a target depth of 15 m. The tow boards were equipped with a high-resolution digital SLR camera. The percent cover of five functional groups, namely hard coral (split in to four morphological subcategories: plating, branching, free living, and digitate), crustose coralline algae (CCA), macroalgae, turf algae, and soft coral was extracted from each image using Coral Point Count software with Excel extensions. Column names as follows: PHOTOID- ID of individual photograph taken (month, day, year_tow number_photo number along that tow). ISLAND- The island the dataset is for, in this case JAR=Jarvis. DIVEYEAR- Year in which survey was conducted. LAT- Latitude and LON- Longitude of the camera position calculated from a layback model to accurately georeference each image position (WGS 1984). DEPTH- Depth of tow board (meters). TEMP- Temperature of tow board (degrees Celsius). The following are all percentage cover values for the major groups, BRAN- Branching coral, CCA- Crustose coralline algae, DIG- Digitate coral, MAC- Macroalgae, PLATE- Plating coral, SOFT- Soft coral, TURF- Turf