JES Comments on QUEST Schedule
-I think is important to have all of the review ID sessions before the presence absence dive so that they can really be reviewing rather than stressing out.
-I think the seaweed ecology and coral reef ecology lectures should be back to back and the benthic survey techniques lecture should be postponed until the day when we are actually going to be surveying (or at least closer in time) the bottom. We don’t do separate coral and algae dives and so it is a good idea to keep these groups together when lecturing. I’d like to talk with you (Jim) and Brian about other benthic surveying techniques that we can try and/or if we want to do a “coral” dive then we can try to get them to do size class frequency stuff…might be hard but could be useful too. It’d also be a good idea to work together on Brian’s talk about benthic monitoring techniques to make sure we are discussing techniques that they will actually use (and some others) but to give them an introduction to what they are going to be doing. My personal feeling is that it would be good to keep all of this “Benthic Stuff” closer together. Rather than interspersing it between geomorphology and macroinverts, etc. Perhaps the first lecture on “Coral Reef Ecology” is more of a general “why we are here” lecture, something to get them excited? I’m not sure.
-I was thinking for the benthic dives that we should mix it up a bit more…have them do point intercept along the transect line-every 10 cm record what is under the line or something (this would be for more rapid assessment types of surveys), then do a quadrat dive, a photo dive and a coral size class dive…just some thoughts
-If we are going to have 2 megafaunal dives (I am assuming that this is inverts) perhaps we should have a megafaunal lecture-about the importance of the megafauna-urchins, Acanthaster etc. If they warrant 2 dives then shouldn’t they warrant a lecture?
-Is there no longer a lecture exam?
-I talked with Ivor about DAR’s new bentic photo method and it is the same technique that I have taught over the last year-they just use a different program which is also free but I think we will be fine with Photogrid. I’ll look into it more.