NSW Marine Estate Towed Video Imagery

Raw downward facing still imagery of the seabed over the NSW continental shelf acquired using NSW government's (Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water) towed video system aboard RV Bombora. Acquisition is ongoing (>2015) predominantly funded by the department under Coastal Reform Climate Change Fund project 'State-wide Science' and/or by various collaborative agencies (DPI; Parks Australia; FRDC) and educational institutions (UoW: UTas). Imagery is captured over areas to 1) ground-truth seabed typologies and validate habitat boundaries derived from multi-beam echosounder (MBES) surveys (www.aodn.org.au or www.ausseabed.gov.au) and/or 2) habitat assessments and monitoring to capture broad distribution of seabed benthic communities. For biodiversity-type assessments, imagery is captured, and transects/sites are selected in a sampling design in accordance with the Australian Field Manuals for Marine Sampling. Imagery captured is generally of benthic habitats in 10-120m of water depth over the NSW inner shelf. Georeferenced (XYZ) and time-stamped (UTC) still imagery is accessible via SEED, the online annotation platform Squidle+ and SeaMap Australia.