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

Susanne Lockhart1, Yi-Ming Gan2

1 Southern Benthics, , United States; 2 Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, , Belgium

Corresponding author(s): Susanne Lockhart (SouthernBenthics@outlook.com), Yi-Ming Gan (data-biodiversity-aq@naturalsciences.be)

Received {date}; Revised {date}; Accepted {date}; Published {date}

Citation: Combination of authors, year of data paper publication (in parentheses), Title, Journal Name, Volume, Issue number (in parentheses), and doi of the data paper.

Resource Citation

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

Abstract

Evidence of a Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem documented via tourist submarine off Cape Well-Met, Vega Island, Eastern Antarctic Peninsula (Subarea 48.1) - data is a sampling event type dataset published by AntOBIS.

This dataset contains records of taxonomic groups that are considered VME-IT by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Resources (CCAMLR) and their relative percent abundances compared to non-VME-IT and bare substrate based on footage taken with a GoPro Hero 7 Black mounted in the pilot window of a U-Boat Worx Cruise Sub 7-300 during an MY Scenic Eclipse citizen tourist cruise at Cape Well-Met, Vega Island, Antarctica on 29 November 2019. The data is published as a standardized Darwin Core Archive and includes locality, coordinates, event date, depth, sampling protocol, sampling effort, occurrence status, vernacular name, scientific name and taxa classification. Multimedia associated with this resource is available at Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6772140
This dataset is published by SCAR-AntOBIS under the license CC-BY 4.0. Please follow the guidelines from the SCAR and IPY Data Policies (https://www.scar.org/excom-meetings/xxxi-scar-delegates-2010-buenos-aires-argentina/4563-scar-xxxi-ip04b-scar-data-policy/file/) when using the data. If you have any questions regarding this dataset, do not hesitate to contact us via the contact information provided in the metadata or via data-biodiversity-aq@naturalsciences.be. Issues with dataset can be reported at https://github.com/biodiversity-aq/data-publication/

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

Project details

Project title: The Soap & The Sea
Personnel: Susanne Lockhart, Remy Izendooren
Funding: This project is funded by The Soap and The Sea, a Swiss organic and ocean-friendly soap enterprise that donates half of its profits to Ocean Conservation initiatives.

Data published through GBIF: https://ipt.biodiversity.aq/resource?r=cape-well-met_2019

Taxonomic coverage

Taxonomic ranks
Kingdom: Animalia, Chromista
Phylum: Porifera, Cnidaria, Brachiopoda, Bryozoa, Annelida, Mollusca, Arthropoda, Echinodermata, Hemichordata, Chordata, Foraminifera

Spatial coverage

General spatial coverage: Cape Well-Met, north coast Vega Island, Antarctica
Coordinates: 63°47'6''S and 63°47'6''S Latitude; 57°20'13.2''W and 57°20'13.2''W Longitude 

Temporal coverage: November 29, 2019

Methods

Method step description: 
- . 	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.
- . 	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.
- . 	Final Cut Pro X was first used to join the files into one video file per dive.
- . 	The videos were then cropped to remove the edge of the pilot’s window frame and to adjust the colour balance.
- . 	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.
- . 	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.
- . 	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).
- . 	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.
- . 	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).
- . 	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).
Study extent description: This dataset describes the abundance and distribution of VME-IT of the tourist vessel MY Scenic Eclipse at Cape Well-Met, Vega Island, Antarctica on 29 Nov 2019.
Sampling description: 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.
Quality control description: - All records were validated.
- Coordinates were converted into decimal latitude and decimal longitude and plotted on map to verify the actual geographical location corresponds to its locality.
- All scientific names were checked for typo and matched to the species information backbone of Worlds Register of Marine Species (http://marinespecies.org/) and LSID were assigned to each taxa as scientificNameID.
- Event date was converted into ISO 8601.

Datasets

Dataset description
Object name: Darwin Core Archive Evidence of a Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem documented via tourist submarine off Cape Well-Met, Vega Island, Eastern Antarctic Peninsula (Subarea 48.1) - data
Character encoding: UTF-8
Format name: Darwin Core Archive format
Format version: 1.0
Distribution: https://ipt.biodiversity.aq/archive.do?r=cape-well-met_2019
Publication date of data: 2022-07-02
Language: English
Licences of use: Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 License

Metadata language: English
Date of metadata creation: 2022-06-19
Hierarchy level: Dataset

References
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
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
SC-CAMLR-XXVII (2018) Thirty-seventh Meeting of the Scientific Committee. CCAMLR. Hobart, Australia.
Silvertown, J. (2009) A new dawn for citizen science. Trends in Ecology and Evolution. 24(9): 467-471.
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.
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