Australian Seafloor Video and Imagery from Towed Surveys

Geoscience Australia collected towed video and still imagery of the seafloor from 21 marine surveys conducted between 2007 and 2013. The data provides direct visual observations of coastal and deep-sea environments around Australia and Antarctic waters. Footage captures geological features, habitats, and organisms from 1-2 metres above the seabed.

Use Cases

• Classify benthic habitats and substrate types from video frames and still images.
• Identify and catalog marine organisms observed in the video footage.
• Map the distribution of seafloor geological features across survey transects.
• Analyze habitat changes over time by comparing surveys from different years.
• Train computer vision models to automatically detect and label seafloor objects in marine video.

Strengths

• Includes data from 21 distinct marine surveys conducted over a 7-year period.
• Video was captured 1-2 metres above the seafloor, providing sharp imagery of details.
• Surveys cover both coastal and deep offshore sites, including first images of some areas.

Limitations

• Specific row counts, video hours, and image counts are not provided.
• Data is primarily from 2007-2013, with no confirmation of more recent updates.
• The HTML file format suggests metadata, not direct access to the raw video/image files.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia, via the Australian Ocean Data Network.

Collection Method

Towed video system lowered from a ship and recorded in real-time at 1-2 knots.

Time Range

2007 to 2013.

Freshness

Last platform update was 2026-04 04, but underlying survey data is from 2007-2013.

Geography

Australia's marine jurisdiction and Antarctic waters.