Oceanic Shoals Marine Reserve Pelagic Fish Surveys via Baited Camera, 2012

September and October 2012 deployments of pelagic baited camera systems (stereo-BRUVS) within the Oceanic Shoals Commonwealth Marine Reserve in the Timor Sea. The dataset contains species lists and relative abundance data (MaxN) from 116 sampling sites across three focal areas. The survey was a key component of the Australian Government's National Environmental Research Program Marine Biodiversity Hub, involving partners like the Australian Institute of Marine Science and Geoscience Australia.

Use Cases

• Estimating relative fish abundance based on MaxN (maximum number of individuals per frame) metrics.
• Analyzing pelagic fish community composition and species lists within a marine reserve.
• Correlating fish observations with concurrent oceanographic measurements (e.g., CTD data) mentioned in the survey.
• Mapping species distribution across the 116 sampling sites within the three focal areas of the reserve.

Strengths

• Data collected from 116 distinct sampling sites, providing spatial coverage.
• Survey conducted as part of a coordinated government research program (National Environmental Research Program Marine Biodiversity Hub).
• Multiple data types were acquired concurrently (e.g., multibeam sonar, towed video, CTD casts), enabling potential multi-modal analysis.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data is from a specific campaign in 2012; temporal coverage is limited.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for some modeling tasks.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network via data.gov.au

Collection Method

Deployments of pelagic baited remote underwater video systems (stereo-BRUVS) from the RV Solander.

Time Range

September-October 2012

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-04 18:14:02.790026; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Oceanic Shoals Commonwealth Marine Reserve, Timor Sea