NESP MaC Project 2.6 - Mapping critical Australian sea lion habitat to assess ecological v

Eight adult female Australian sea lions were fitted with cameras and GPS tags at two colonies, recording nearly 80 hours of video footage over 560 km of seabed. The project used machine learning to create fine-scale habitat maps from this footage, identifying six distinct benthic habitat types. This work was conducted by the NESP Marine and Coastal Hub and data is hosted by the Australian Ocean Data Network.

Use Cases

• Modeling fine-scale habitat use and foraging intensity based on GPS tracking and video footage.
• Assessing the ecological value and risks of different benthic habitat types for population recovery.
• Informing marine park design and identifying Biologically Important Areas based on mapped habitat data.
• Monitoring long-term habitat change and emerging threats to Australian sea lion colonies.

Strengths

• Data collection involved eight animals over two key colonies, generating nearly 80 hours of video.
• Footage covers 560 km of seabed, enabling identification of six distinct benthic habitat types.
• Methodology combines animal-borne cameras with GPS and motion sensors for fine-scale, multi-modal data.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the two initial study sites.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network (host), NESP Marine and Coastal Hub (project).

Collection Method

Deployment of compact animal-borne cameras with GPS and motion sensors on sea lions.

Time Range

2022-2024

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-04 22:27:31.602401; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Seal Bay (Southern Kangaroo Island Marine Park) and Olive Island (Western Eyre Marine Park), Australia.