Quick start guide

Here’s how you can start with MERMAID in a few easy steps

1. Create your MERMAID account

• Go to MERMAID Collect at app.datamermaid.org

• Click Sign up and choose:

  • Google login (use your Gmail account), or

  • Enter an email and password

• Verify your email (if not using Google)

• You’re ready to start using MERMAID Collect

2. Start your first project in MERMAID Collect

• Projects are the digital home for your monitoring surveys

  • Log in to MERMAID Collect

  • Click New project (top-right)

  • Enter a project name and click Create project

3. Set up your project

• Add project info → Under ADMIN > Project info, enter description and add organization(s)

• Invite team members → Under ADMIN > Users, add emails and assign roles:

  • Admin – full control

  • Collector (default) – enter and submit data

  • Read-only – view/export data only

• Set data sharing policies → Under ADMIN > Data sharing, choose for each survey type:

  • Private – raw and summary data private, metadata visible

  • Public summary (default) – raw data private, summary data and metadata visible

  • Public – all data accessible, including raw data

• Add sites → Under METADATA > Sites, create new site or copy from other projects

• Add management → Under METADATA > Management Regimes, create new management or copy from other projects

4. Collect data in your project

• Go to your project’s Collecting page

• Click + Add sample unit

• Choose survey method:

  • Fish belt

  • Benthic PIT / LIT / photo quadrat (manual or AI image classification)

  • Bleaching

  • Habitat complexity

• Fill out required fields (marked with a red asterisk) such as site, management and date

• Enter your observations and get real-time reef health metric summaries (online and offline)

• Save progress anytime

• When ready, validate and submit → MERMAID automatically checks your data before submission

5. Explore and share your data

• Go to MERMAID Explore (explore.datamermaid.org) from your project by clicking the globe icon

• Use the advanced filters to visualize reef health metrics like fish biomass and benthic % cover

• Share with others by clicking Share this view

• Export your data (as spreadsheets) from MERMAID Collect and Explore

6. Analyze and report your data

• Use the MERMAID R package (mermaidr) to access and analyze your data (or public data in MERMAID). For full documentation, go to data-mermaid.github.io/mermaidr/

• Explore our analysis hub at datamermaid.org/analysis-hub for analysis and reporting templates or submit your own

You can also download our quick start guide and share with your team to kick start the MERMAID journey.