MBON: Benthic percent cover in the Santa Barbara Channel

This study aims to quantify the percent cover of sessile species
from shallow rocky reefs along the coast of Santa Barbara Channel,
including the Channel Island National Park monitoring sites. BisQue
(Bio-Imagery Semantic Query User Environment, a cloud-based analysis
platform) was used to analyzed over 1500 images taken between 2013
and 2015 on the shallow reefs. This is the first phase of a bigger
project that directs to improve the image analysis to complement or
replace time-consuming in-situ surveys by divers. This data set contains percent cover and occurrence data of
invertebrates, algae and fish from 22 subtidal rocky reef sites
(Anacapa Landing, Arroyo Burro, Arroyo Quemado, Carpinteria,
Cathedral Cove, Cuyler-Bat Rock, Diablo, Ellwood Mesa, Fry’s, Gull
Island, Hazards, Isla Vista, Johnsons Lee-North, Mohawk, Naples,
Pelican, Prisoners, Rhodes, Scorpion, Solimar, West-End and Cat
Rock, Yellowbank). One survey image was collected at each site.
Images were processed from 2015-2017 using BisQue with over 300
unique identifying tags. Data are organized in two tables (1)
percent cover, (2) occurrence (present-absent).