Coral reef health survey report app
Reef surveys are recorded underwater on slates and transcribed on the boat: benthic point intercepts along fixed transects, coral health and bleaching categories, crown-of-thorns and Drupella counts, and debris. The report compares this visit’s cover with the site’s history. Transcription is where errors creep in, because the boat is usually out of signal and the slate gets copied into a spreadsheet days later.
Built for marine parks running teams of roughly 3–50 inspectors.
Sample Reef health report
An illustrative excerpt. The site, readings and findings are fictional; the layout is yours to set.
Reef health report
Site summary — Fictional Reef, north flank, 6 m
- Survey date
- 9 February 2026
- Method
- 4 × 20 m transects, point intercept at 0.5 m
- Previous survey
- August 2025
| Indicator | This survey (previous) | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Hard coral cover | 31% (38%) | Status: Declined |
| Bleached colonies (any severity) | 22% of colonies on transect | Status: Elevated |
| Crown-of-thorns starfish | 0 per transect (0) | Status: Pass |
| Recently killed coral | 4% of points | Status: Note |
Fields captured on site
Your firm builds the form in-app, so these are a starting point rather than a fixed schema. Every field is captured on the device, with or without signal, and lands in the reef health report where your template puts it.
Per dive
- Site and depth (linked)
- Water temperature
- Visibility
- Divers and buddy pairs
Per transect
- Transect number
- Benthic category at each point
- Bleaching category per colony
- Coral predators counted
- Debris and damage
Evidence
- Transect photos
- Notable observations
- Voice notes recorded on the boat
Standards the report works to
- GBRMP Act 1975Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act 1975 (Cth)
- Surveys within the Marine Park operate under permits whose conditions a report may need to address.
Load the standards you hold into your reference library and the drafted prose is written against them rather than against a general model.
How the reef health report gets built
Capture it once, offline
Your firm builds the coral reef survey form in-app — 25 field types, nesting repeatable groups, compound AND/OR visibility rules, reusable modules and calculated fields. Field capture works with no signal: jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio all queue in an idempotent outbox that only clears once the server confirms receipt.
Link it to your sites, transects and plots
Enter sites, transects and plots once, as a register. Every one of your species observations and survey events then points at a stored row rather than a name somebody typed — and the links survive a disconnected device.
Render your own template
The reef health report renders into the Word template you already use — your letterhead, your section order, your clause library — with conditionals, loops over repeats, composable sub-templates and photo grids.
Reviewed before it leaves
You write the review framework: a checklist of what a reef health report must contain, plus the prose standards you would mark a junior against. Link it to a report template and it runs every time that template renders. Each finding comes back graded info, minor or major, quoting the sentence at fault, and a person accepts or dismisses every one.
Because the structured submission behind the report is held too, the review is a comparison rather than a proofread: The report concludes no threatened species were recorded; the survey event on Transect 3 carries an observation that says otherwise.
Checks a ecology framework usually carries
- Survey effort described meets the guideline for the species being assessed
- Every species in the results table is carried through to the discussion
- Weather, season and access limitations are recorded, not left implied
- Each approval or offset condition is addressed explicitly
Questions
- Can we enter the slate on the boat with no signal?
- Yes. Field capture works offline and submissions queue on the device until it is back in range.
- Can point intercept totals become percentage cover automatically?
- Calculated fields can count points by category across a transect repeat and divide by the total, so cover is worked out as the slate is entered.
- Can each site show its history in the report?
- Each survey references the stored site, so the template can loop over earlier surveys of the same site and print a cover trend.
What this is not
Worth knowing before you book a demo, so neither of us wastes the half hour.
- Not field-service dispatch. No timesheets, no parts, no inventory. Scheduling exists to get an inspector to a site.
- No signature capture. If your deliverable has to carry a signed sign-off on the artefact itself, this is not the tool yet.
- Field capture is what works offline — jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio. Reports, chat, scheduling and the inbox need a connection.
- No client portal. Reports go out as a file or a password-protected link.
Other ecology work we cover
- Camera trap programsCamera trap data report
- Fauna spotter catcher logsSpotter catcher shift report
- Fauna surveysFauna assessment report
- Fish surveysFish assemblage report
- Flora surveysVegetation assessment report
- Frog surveysFrog census report
- Habitat tree assessmentsHabitat tree register
- Koala habitat assessmentsKoala habitat report
Other disciplines
Rebuild your reef health report in SurveyThanks
Bring the Word template you already send clients. If you are coming off another field-forms tool, a filled report can be uploaded, read field by field, and re-rendered into your template.