Submersible Gathered Evidence of a Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem at the Melchior Islands, Western Antarctic Peninsula (Subarea 48.1)

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 20 records.

3 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, Potter S, Gan Y (2024). Submersible Gathered Evidence of a Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem at the Melchior Islands, Western Antarctic Peninsula (Subarea 48.1). Version 1.6. SCAR - AntOBIS. Samplingevent dataset. https://ipt-obis.gbif.us/resource?r=emm4_vme-melchior-islands&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: a6f7215c-8238-4f45-8125-274a2b71e6bc.  SCAR - AntOBIS publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Ocean Biodiversity Information System.

Keywords

Samplingevent; Observation; CCAMLR; ANTARCTICA; SPONGES; VULNERABLE MARINE ECOSYSTEM; VME; HYDROIDS; CORALS; INDICATOR TAXA

Contacts

Geographic Coverage

Lambda Island, Melchior Islands, Western Antarctic Peninsula

Taxonomic Coverage

No Description available

Temporal Coverage

Project Data

A novel collaboration between commercial submersible pilots, and their organizations, with Southern Benthics to provide footage of the seabed around Antarctica for the purposes of securing protection for VMEs, and for monitoring the health of those VMEs in the long term in the face of the climate crisis.

The personnel involved in the project:

Sampling Methods

Sampling was conducted by U Boat Worx Cruise Sub-7, recording imagery with Panasonic AW-UE150KEJ 4K Integrated PTZ camera operated with a Panasonic AW-RP60GJ remote camera controller.

Method step description:

1. DaVinci Resolve 18 was used to combine separate files where necessary and for editing.
2. Clean-up followed the same methodology as was used for analyzing the submarine footage for the successful nomination of VMEs in WG-EMM-22/46Rev1 to remove unusable sequences. For the Lambda Is footage that meant the removal of any sequences where the submersible was too far from the wall, where the visibility was poor and when the submersible was stationary. Footage from Dive A was the longest resulting video after the completion of this clean-up procedure (Table 1), thus it became the footage that was analysed.
3. Footage was color adjusted within DaVinci Resolve 18.
4. The analysis methodology also followed that which was used in WG-EMM-22/46Rev1. To compare the relative percent abundance of VME indicator taxa to that of non-VME taxa and bare substrate at the Lambda Is site, frames were exported at regular intervals (30 secs) beginning at 0:00.
5. The resulting series of images were then imported into the program PAPARA(ZZ)I (Marcon & Purser, 2017). 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.
6. 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.

Bibliographic Citations

1. SC-CAMLR-XXXVII (2018) Thirty-seventh Meeting of the Scientific Committee. CCAMLR. Hobart, Australia.
2. SC-CAMLR-41 (2022) Forty-first meeting of the Scientific Committee. CCAMLR. Hobart, Australia.
3. WG-EMM-18/35. Lockhart, S. & J. Hocevar (2018) Evidence of Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems documented via submarine in the Antarctic Sound and Gerlache Strait (Subarea 48.1). CCAMLR. Hobart, Australia.
4. WG-EMM-22/34Rev1. Lockhart, S. & R. Izendooren (2022) Evidence of a Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem documented via tourist submarine off Cape Well-Met, Vega Island, Eastern Antarctic Peninsula (Subarea 48.1). CCAMLR. Hobart, Australia.
5. WG-EMM-22/46Rev1. Lockhart, S., R. Downey, R. García-Roa, J. Hocevar & L. Weller (2022) Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems documented via submarine in the Bransfield Strait and the Eastern Antarctic Peninsula (Subarea 48.1). CCAMLR. Hobart, Australia.
6. 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.
7. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. (2023). SCAR Report 42 - September 2022 - SCAR Data Policy (2022). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7825314
8. Lockhart, Susanne, Shaylyn Potter, Chris Venus, Kara Weller, and Remy Izendooren. “Submersible Gathered Evidence of a Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem at the Melchior Islands, Western Antarctic Peninsula (subarea 48.1) - Multimedia”. Zenodo, June 26, 2024. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12545505

Additional Metadata