Single visit habitat and species recording
The Seasearch Surveyor Form provides a wide variety of data on habitats present at individual sites based on a single site visit. While the number of individuals engaged in the submission of these data is a relatively small subset of the Seasearch recording community the data provided from Surveyor recording in the UK has been used in the designation of their network of Marine Conservation Zones.
It is hoped that by increasing the capacity for recording within the Irish diving community more people can be trained to the Surveyor level and that those already submitting records at this level can be further trained through Specialist courses. Surveyor training is normally undertaken after a suitable level of experience in recording at Observer level has been achieved and is quite an in-depth training course.
The Surveyor Course is aimed at experienced Seasearch Observers and others with a good background knowledge of marine life and marine recording. The aim is to enable you to complete the Seasearch Survey Form which is used on most of the expeditionary Seasearch dives and which gives much more detailed information for future conservation purposes.
The course lasts two days and includes a dive on the second day. The Course concentrates on identifying and classifying marine habitats, and on the priority species and habitats used to identify marine protected areas. Again we use video on the first day and you fill in practice forms both from the video and from the dive itself. The course is assessed and successful participants can carry on and become Seasearch Surveyors after completing a further five forms and an ID test.
