Lines with no species entry identify quadrats in which no octocorals were present. This is also noted in the comments as "No colonies present."

No processing was conducted beyond loading and proofreading entries from field data sheets.

DATA NOTES & EDITS from data contributor:
29-Jul-14 2014- In the first transect at Booby Rock, some Plexaura spp. colonies (most likely Plexaura homomalla kukenthali) were incorrectly identified as P. kuna colonies. These have been changed changes to Plexaura sp
11-Sep-16 2014 - First Europa transect, now labelled "random" was arbitrarily placed on the reef before the 10x50 grid was laid out
2014 - All quadrats on right side of line
2014 - Europa, species notation ec2 on Comments 1 refers to colonies that appeared to be atypical E. calyculata
2014 - E Cabritte, species notation em2 on Comments 1 refers to colonies that appeared to be E. mammosa but may be Eunicea succinea
2014 - Comment 1: "Originally x": Miss-identification Missidentification in the field of the species "x", corrected after sclerites examination .
2015- All quadrats we positioned randomly on the left (L) or right (R) side of the transect line.
2015 -Species notation aa2 on Comments 1 refers to colonies that appeared to be A. americana but had somewhat broader branchlets and were not as slimy as classic A. americana. All aa2 colonies that were examined under stereoscope had A. americana sclerites.
2015 30-Jul-15 Europa 30 R 6 efl 4
2015- E Cabritte, Transect 20D - The transect line was incorrectly placed, running from the 20m eyebolt to the 30m eyebolt.
2015 - Comment 1: "Originally x": Miss-identification Missidentification in the field of the species "x", corrected after sclerites examination .
12-Sep-16 2016 - Colonies that on the basis of branch thickness are clearly not recruits but are <5 cm height are included as adults.
2016 - Comments 1: "Colony picture": Pictures were taken of some of the colonies for identification purposes
2016 - Europa, Transect 30D - The transect line was incorrectly placed, running from the 30m eyebolt to the 20m eyebolt.
2016 - Comments 1: "Originally x": Missidentification in the field of the species "x", corrected after sclerites examination .
2016 - Comments 1: "Thin form": A thinner form of E. clavigera
12-Sep-16 2016 - Recommendations for statistical analysis: Morphological similarities among certain species make the identification of some colonies in the field extremely difficult.

The conservative approach will be to use the following groups:
Eunicea group 1: em/esu/elc
Plexaurella group 1: pfu/pd
Pseudoplexaura group 1: pw/pp/pf

BCO-DMO Data Manager Processing Notes:
* added a conventional header with dataset name, PI name, version date
* modified parameter names to conform with BCO-DMO naming conventions
* blank values replaced with no data value 'nd'
* added lat lon of sites
* converted site locations from degrees decimal minutes to decimal degrees
* added species names based on species codes
* fixed switched values for E_Cabritte on 2016-07-26. Transect meter changed from R to 6 and transect side from 6 to R.
* sorted data by site, species, date, transect_pos
* the following code replacements and species name changes have been made to this dataset:
eusp -> esp and species "Eucinea sp"
ef -> efu and species "Eunicea fusca"
unk -> unknown
Eunicea lacinata -> Eunicea laciniata (accepted name)

Also, in comments andd -> and

Data verson 2017-03-20 replaced by version 2018-01-09 which updates site coordinates. Spelling corrections also made to "DATA NOTES & EDITS" section above.

Data version 2018-04-05 replaces version 2018-01-09. Data updated to include the sampling year 2017.
* in comments andd -> and
* species names along with field codes used in this dataset can be found in "species list" dataset https://www.bco-dmo.org/dataset/733063
* column names changed to match previous versions and species list (e.g. Species_code -> field_code)
* leading and trailing spaces removed from field codes

changes made to original line numbers to match entries on species list.
4757 - a - aa
3879 - am - ma
1527 - ef - efl
1536 - ef -efl
4117 - etop - eto
4384 - pv - pc
2152 - unk - pc
3085 - unk - pc

octocoral_transects.csv