Antifouling coatings can reduce algal growth in coral aquaculture

The data were collected to test the antifouling efficacy and fouling community composition of recently-developed antifouling coatings on coral plugs. The same plugs were tested for A. tenuis coral larval settlement, to investigate, whether these coatings were a deterrent for coral settlement. The ultimate goal of the research was to investigate whether the coatings reduced algal growth without inhibiting larval settlement adjacent to the coatings. The data were collected from November to December, 2019 at AIMS, by the use of a camera trolley (Nikon D810 with a Nikon AF-S 60 mm f/2.8 G Micro ED Lens outfitted with four Ikelite DS160 strobes). The data (images) were analysed with the Trainable Weka Segmentation (TWS) plugin in the ImageJ software.

This data collection includes:

Images of coral settlement plugs with coral recruits and algal fouling

Model used by the Trainable Weka Segmentation (TWS) plugin for Fiji processing program in ImageJ (version 1.53c) – this was used to segment images into different classes by the use of machine-learning based image classification models