SOL4769: Underwater Video and Images from Carnarvon Shelf Survey

Carnarvon Shelf off Western Australia was surveyed between 12 August and 15 September 2008 aboard the R.V. Solander. The survey collected underwater video footage and still images from 122 stations at depths of 13-125 meters to test physical parameters as surrogates for benthic biodiversity patterns. It was conducted by Geoscience Australia in collaboration with the Australian Institute of Marine Science under the CERF Marine Biodiversity Hub's Surrogates Program.

Use Cases

• Training computer vision models for benthic habitat classification based on underwater still images.
• Analyzing correlations between physical parameters and biodiversity patterns based on co-located survey data.
• Developing geospatial models of shelf biodiversity using imagery tagged with station location and depth.
• Benchmarking image quality for automated analysis of underwater video screen captures.

Strengths

• Data collected from 122 stations provides spatial coverage across the shelf.
• Imagery is co-located with other survey data, enabling robust surrogate testing.
• Coverage spans three defined areas: Mandu, Point Cloates, and Gnarloo.

Limitations

• Video quality varies among transects and some still images were not suitable for analysis.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia and the Australian Institute of Marine Science

Collection Method

Collected via towed video and still camera from the R.V. Solander research vessel.

Time Range

12 August to 15 September 2008

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-10 18:56:03.003231; freshness should be verified

Geography

Carnarvon Shelf, Western Australia (areas: Mandu, Point Cloates, Gnarloo)