Evidence of a Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem documented via tourist submarine off Cape Well-Met, Vega Island, Eastern Antarctic Peninsula (Subarea 48.1) - data

Data Records

The data in this sampling event resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 1 records.

2 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

How to cite

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Lockhart S (2022): Evidence of a Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem documented via tourist submarine off Cape Well-Met, Vega Island, Eastern Antarctic Peninsula (Subarea 48.1) - data. v1.6. SCAR - AntOBIS. Dataset/Samplingevent. https://ipt.biodiversity.aq/resource?r=cape-well-met_2019&v=1.6

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is SCAR - AntOBIS. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: b2cfe598-4ff6-4285-8dd4-be720876fe5f.  SCAR - AntOBIS publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Ocean Biodiversity Information System.

Keywords

Occurrence; VULNERABLE MARINE ECOSYSTEM; VME; CCAMLR; ANTARCTICA; SPONGES; SEA FANS/SEA WHIPS; SEA ANEMONES; LAMP SHELLS; SEA SQUIRTS

Contacts

Geographic Coverage

Cape Well-Met, north coast Vega Island, Antarctica

Taxonomic Coverage

No Description available

Temporal Coverage

Project Data

Southern Benthics aims to identify Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs) in the Southern Ocean and gain protections by proposing them to be included in CCAMLR’s (Commission for the Conservation of Marine Living Resources) VME registry. Registered VMEs are afforded protection from all commercial bottom fishing to a radius of 1 nautical mile from their midpoint. The portion of this work funded by The Soap and The Sea proposes a site discovered by tourist submarine deployed by the super-yacht MY Scenic Eclipse, off Cape Well-Met, north coast of Vega Island, eastern Antarctic Peninsula.

The personnel involved in the project:

Sampling Methods

Video evidence of a Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem (VME) was collected via submarine deployed by the tourist super-yacht MY Scenic Eclipse flagged with Malta. The relevant dives were conducted on the 29th November 2019 within Subarea 48.1.

Method step description:

1. Video evidence of a Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem (VME) was collected via submarine deployed by the tourist super-yacht MY Scenic Eclipse flagged with Malta. Recordings begin at the greatest depth and continue as the submarine travels up the wall. Footage was taken with a GoPro Hero 7 Black mounted in the pilot window of a U-Boat Worx Cruise Sub 7-300 (https://www.uboatworx.com/model/cruisesub). Four submarine dives were filmed.
2. Prior to footage clean-up it was decided that the longest resulting video would be the one that would be analysed. Footage of each of these dives were provided in multiple files.
3. Final Cut Pro X was first used to join the files into one video file per dive.
4. The videos were then cropped to remove the edge of the pilot’s window frame and to adjust the colour balance.
5. Clean-up then followed the same methodology as was used for analyzing the submarine footage for the successful nomination of four VMEs in WG-EMM-18/35 to remove unusable sequences. For the Cape Well-Met footage that meant the removal of any sequences where the submarine was too far from the wall, where the visibility was poor and when the submarine was paused.
6. Footage from Dive C was the longest resulting video after the completion of this clean-up procedure, thus it became the footage that was analysed.
7. The analysis methodology also followed that which was used in WG-EMM-18/35. (https://meetings.ccamlr.org/en/wg-emm-18/35) and in Lockhart & Hocevar (2021) (https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.577761).
8. To compare the relative percent abundance of VME indicator taxa to that of non-VME taxa and bare substrate at the Cape Well-Met site, frames were exported at regular intervals beginning at 0:00.
9. The resulting series of images were then imported into the program PAPARA(ZZ)I (Marcon & Purser, 2017) (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.softx.2017.02.002). Within this program images were further enhanced by adjusting brightness, contrast and gamma. As recommended by the authors, the usable area was then defined for each image allowing the exclusion of dark or blurred edges. See Figure 3 in Lockhart & Hocevar (2021) (https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.577761).
10. Once images were prepared in this way, an array of 100 random points was overlayed. Each point in each image was assigned one of three designations: VME indicator taxa, non-VME taxa or bare substrate. VME indicator taxa were further scored to OTUs (operational taxonomic units).

Bibliographic Citations

1. Lockhart, S. and Hocevar J. (2021) Combined Abundance of all Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem Indicator Taxa inadequate as sole determiner of vulnerability, Antarctic Peninsula. Frontiers in Marine Science. Sept 2021, Vol 8, Article 577761. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.577761
2. Marcon, Y. and Purser A. (2017) PAPARA(ZZ)I: An open-source software interface for annotating photographs of the deep-sea. SoftwareX. 6, 69-80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.softx.2017.02.002
3. SC-CAMLR-XXVII (2018) Thirty-seventh Meeting of the Scientific Committee. CCAMLR. Hobart, Australia.
4. Silvertown, J. (2009) A new dawn for citizen science. Trends in Ecology and Evolution. 24(9): 467-471.
5. WG-EMM-18/35. Lockhart & Hocevar (2018) Evidence of Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems documented via submarine in the Antarctic Sound and Gerlache Strait (Subarea 48.1). CCAMLR. Hobart, Australia.
6. Lockhart, Susanne, & Izendooren, Remy. (2022, June 28). Evidence of a Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem documented via tourist submarine off Cape Well-Met, Vega Island, Eastern Antarctic Peninsula (Subarea 48.1) - Multimedia (1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6772141

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