Mapping and Characterisation of Key Biotic and Physical Attributes of the Torres Strait Ecosystem (Towed Video)

The seabed habitat, marine plant and sessile megabenthos cover of the 50,000 km² area of the Torres Strait Protected Zone and adjacent shelf seabed was observed by a 500 m transect of a Drop-Camera video system at 173 sites, representing a wide range of known physical environments, during one 1-month-long voyage on the James Cook University vessel James Kirby. Continuous underway coding during transects recorded cover of 9 substrata types, 26 biohabitat types, and occurrence of 12 faunal classes. Laboratory post-analysis of the video recorded more detail at ~30 random frames per transect, including: 20 substratum types, 92 biological types -- the dataset comprises ~28,000 site-by-type records. In addition, during most transects, digital still photographs were taken at 5-15 second intervals with strobes, and CTD data were recorded.