Dr. Vanessa Lucieer is the program manager for the SeaMap Tasmania program operating out of the Tasmanian Aquaculture and Fisheries Institute (TAFI) at the University of Tasmania. The aim of the program is to map the distribution of coastal marine habitats along the entire length of the Tasmanian coastline in depths ranging from shallow sub-tidal (1-2m) out to the 40m depth contour. The generation of a series of habitat maps showing the coverage and configuration of reef habitat, seagrass and sand habitats would assist ongoing research projects at TAFI in the fields of fisheries science/ management, impact and threat assessment, marine reserve design and planning and spatial modelling. The project has currently mapped and produced habitat maps of more than 1,500km of coastline on the east and north of Tasmania.
The following video shows the resulting bathymetry surface constructed from a short section of one survey generated inside Eonfusion. The vessel ran a gridded series of transects both perpendicular and parallel to the shoreline spaced at around 150-200m intervals to establish a base line of habitat boundaries. The vessel was equipped with a Simrad Single Beam EK60 echosounder and geo-referenced towed underwater video camera. The video was used to verify (ground truth) the data collected by the echosounder. In areas of high habitat complexity the vessel conducted several runs over the same area to construct a more precise maps of habitat boundaries. The video shows how the video data was used to ground truth the echogram trace and the habitat attributes assigned to the track log.
The resulting data has been made publicly available by TAFI. For data or more information on the program, please refer to the SeaMap Tasmania home page or contact Dr. Hugh Pederson.
Acknowledgement: The SeaMap Tasmania program is funded by the Tasmanian Aquaculture and Fisheries Institute which is a joint initiative between the State Government and University of Tasmania. Dr. Lucieer is currently supported by TAFI and the Commonwealth Environment Research Facilities (CERF) Hub for the Prediction and Management of Australia's Marine Biodiversity (Marine Biodiversity Hub).
