Benthic megafauna in active venting areas and peripheries of the Lucky Strike vent field

Benthic megafaunal communities have not yet been surveyed in the periphery of active venting areas of the Lucky Strike hydrothermal vent field. During the MoMARSAT expedition in 2018, parallel imagery transects were performed with the OTUS camera mounted in a downward-looking configuration on the ROV Victor6000. Imagery transects were performed in the south-east area (i.e., around the Eiffel Tower, Montsegur and Cimendef active vent edifices) and in the south-west central area (i.e., around the Sapin, White Castle, South Crystal, Crystal and Pico active vent edifices). This enabled to retrieve 1,626 non-overlapping images taken at constant altitude (4 m) and speed (0.2 m/s), and representing a surface of 23336 m2 of seabed. This dataset presents the megafauna (organism > 1 cm) that were annotated in these images, using the Biigle annotation software. Annotations were used to characterise the benthic communities found at the Lucky Strike hydrothermal vent field. Several environmental variables (i.e., area: south-east or south-west central, vent exposure: distance from closest venting area [max. 120 m], substratum lithology: sulphur, slab, basalt, volcanoclastic sediment) were used to inform on the environmental drivers structuring benthic communities (i.e., diversity, density) at the Lucky strike hydrothermal vent field.
All images can be found on SEANOE under the DOI:10.17882/95015
Raw annotations can be shared on demand on Biigle IFREMER.