Diving Services Framework 2022 (Lot 8)

Tender description

The management of Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) should aim to achieve the ‘favourable conservation status’ (FCS) of habitat and species features. Features can be: an entire habitat; a range of plant/animal communities; an individual plant/animal community; or individual species. In the case of SACs, the features are the habitats and/or species listed in Annex I and Annex II of the Habitats Directive for which the individual MPAs were designated. To inform management and enable reporting on the FCS of the subtidal aspects of the SACs, NRW undertakes diving monitoring work. A monitoring work programme has been established for each statutory site by NRW. The programme, or parts thereof, will be implemented by the contractor working as part of a team alongside NRW specialist staff. NRW in conjunction with specialist diving biologist contractors completed multiple field seasons of diving monitoring work across Wales. Techniques include well-established Marine Nature Conservation Review methodology (Phase 2 level survey, Hiscock 1996) as well as developing and adapting techniques such as fixed-point quadrat sampling and video and digital stills photography to assess the various attributes of reefs in the Welsh SACs. Lot 8: Diving data analyst A person with a scientific background and preferably a diver with a knowledge of marine biological species. They will be adept at transcribing complex data from field recording forms to spreadsheets or Marine Recorder. Able to check the taxonomic species names in relevant literature where necessary. They will be competent in data validation techniques, use of spreadsheets and statistical software. The analyst may also be required to work with imaging software such Adobe Photoshop and Premiere for stitching images or extracting species data. A knowledge of annotation software BIIGLE and CATAMI would be advantageous. This role may be expected to attend surveys and input data at the survey base but not take part in diving operations themselves. They may also be required to analyse recorded video to extract species and abundance data.