SS200803 - Fishery Spatial Closures Project - Pilot survey in the 60-mile closure for southern dogfish (GAB): Video Survey

Towed camera transects were conducted in the Great Australian Bight (GAB) and near St Helen's Hill seamount during the pilot survey for estimating the effectiveness of spatial closures for deepwater gulper sharks and associated fishery species. There are large gaps in ecological knowledge of gulper sharks which limit the effective design of area closures (e.g. optimising sizes and numbers) and assessment of their performance. The survey aimed to fill these gaps do this by characterising the habitats and ecosystem processes in 200-700 m depths that sustain key species, and commencing a process to determine the relevant aspects of species ecology. Primarily this will be (1) to measure the movement of fish within and to/ from a large closed area in the GAB with a tagging program, and (2) estimate the abundance of selected species in relation to habitat features (substructure within submarine canyons, escarpments and rocky banks, and adjacent water column features) with two independent, non-extractive photographic methods. This metadata record refers to the image data collected during the survey.
The image annotations collected for this project will added to the Oracle data base BHIMAGE and the associated videos and still images have been archived as described in MarLIN record 14436 'Benthic Habitats Video Image Archive'.