Improving_Future_Monitoring

Improving Future Monitoring

As a data science collaborative, HIMARC provides analytical tools and statistical guidance to help partners design effective monitoring programs. Fish communities are inherently variable, making it easy for surveys to miss meaningful ecological trends if sampling isn’t designed strategically. By collaborating directly with management agencies and local communities, we help partners maximize their resources and allocate survey effort where it yields the strongest insights.

Featured projects:

Power Analysis & Survey Design for Oʻahu Reef Fishes

To support the Division of Aquatic Resources (DAR) in planning future monitoring across Oʻahu’s nearshore reefs, HIMARC conducted comprehensive statistical power analyses. Coral reef fish surveys often suffer from high statistical noise, which can obscure real population shifts. By marrying our quantitative frameworks with geospatial analyses of relevant habitat parameters, we delivered a power assessment report and assisted DAR in optimizing survey effort allocation across space and time to ensure future sampling is better equipped to detect ecologically significant changes.

Kaʻūpūlēhu Stratified Sampling Design

To evaluate how nearshore fish biomass responds to management changes within the Kaʻūpūlehu Fisheries Management Area (FMA), also known as the “Try Wait” area, HIMARC partnered withDivision of Aquatic Resources (DAR), The Nature Conservancy, and Hui Kahuwai, to design a targeted survey structure. We developed a spatially stratified sampling approach across key habitat types to capture localized habitat variability, optimizing field survey efficiency and enhancing statistical power for downstream ecological analyses.