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Towards improved benthic monitoring using underwater video: Experiences from the Laurentian Great Lakes
Citation:
Angradi, T., M. Wick, AND M. Pawlowski. Towards improved benthic monitoring using underwater video: Experiences from the Laurentian Great Lakes. Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation Conference, AL, Mobile, November 03 - 07, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
This presentation will be on interest to benthic researchers in the Great Lakes and elsewhere. The research described here is on the cutting edge of quantitative benthic sampling using underwater video.
Description:
Scientists at the Mid-Continent Ecology Division Laboratory have made progress in the use of underwater video for the assessment of benthic conditions in the Laurentian Great lakes, including the nearshore, embayments and connecting channels. Underwater video has several advantages over traditional sampling methods such as PONAR grab samples, as well as some challenges. Underwater video has proven most useful so far in identifying the presence of invasive species, including dreissenid mussels and the round goby and characterizing benthic habitat. Early efforts using oblique-view drop cameras produced poor quality video. More recent effort using stable video carriages that rest on the bottom and deploy better cameras can collect high quality down-looking and oblique video that can be used to identify invasive species, quantitative estimates of abundance and biomass, and even study their autecology. A remaining challenge is developing efficient methods for extracting information from videos. We will show example videos from Lakes Huron and Ontario and the Niagara River (connecting channel), and we will briefly demonstrate a crowd-sourcing web application, “Deep Lake Explorer”, which shows promise as a tool for video content analysis.