RVC Data Portal

The Southeast Fisheries Science Center, along with other governmental, academic, and private partners, has been conducting a visual survey of reef fish species in the Florida Keys since 1978. This survey has since been expanded to include the Dry Tortugas, Southeast Florida Region and U.S Caribbean. All the data from this survey collected since 1999 is now available as .csv files for general use as part of this data portal. To learn more about the history, sampling design, and statistical design of the survey, please read Smith et al. 2011.

Available Data

RVC Data R package

The Southeast Fisheries Science center has produced an R package to help with accessing and analyzing Reef Visual Census Data. It can be used to import RVC data into R, and produce commonly used summary statistics such as density, abundance, and biomass.

Get the R package on GitHub