How MERMAID Works
MERMAID brings you a complete suite of digital tools that work together to streamline and enhance your coral reef data collection, management, and analysis.
MERMAID Collect
Start by creating a project in MERMAID Collect, where you can define your survey sites, assign team members, and enter data using standardized methods for fish, benthic, and bleaching surveys, even offline. MERMAID Collect replaces spreadsheets with a user-friendly interface that guides you through data entry, validation, and submission, ensuring high-quality, ready-to-use datasets.
Visit the documentation for MERMAID Collect.
MERMAID Explore
After submitting your data in MERMAID Collect, use MERMAID Explore to visualize reef health metrics such as fish biomass and benthic cover—ranging from national summaries down to individual sites. MERMAID Explore enables you to browse interactive charts, view project metadata, and export clean data. It also provides access to reef monitoring data from publicly shared projects across the MERMAID community, helping you contextualize your findings within broader regional or global patterns.
Visit the documentation for MERMAID Explore.
MERMAID R Package (mermaidr)
For advanced analysis, use the MERMAID R package to access your project data within R. The package provides structured, analysis-ready observations and summary metrics for fish, benthic, and bleaching surveys. Easily generate custom plots, perform statistical modeling, or integrate MERMAID data into larger workflows. With the MERMAID R package, you can also tap into one of the largest global databases of public coral reef data—directly within your reproducible R workflows.
Visit the documentation for the MERMAID R package.
Together, these tools create a streamlined, scientist-first workflow—making it easier to collect consistent data, collaborate with teams, and turn monitoring efforts into insights for conservation and management.
