Madison-Swanson MPA reef fish video survey

The Southeast Fisheries Science Center Mississippi Laboratories conducts standardized fisheries independent resource surveys in the Gulf of Mexico, South Atlantic, and U.S. Caribbean to provide abundance and distribution information to support regional and international stock assessments. The reef fish survey of Madison-Swanson and Steamboat Lumps MPA is conducted primarily on the along topographic features (e.g. reefs, banks and ledges) of the MPA. A two-stage sampling design is used with the first stage or primary sampling units defined by geographic/geoform strata including ridges, pinnacles, rubble and sand flats and the second stage being randomly selected sites within the geoform strata. Sampling is conducted using a video camera array. No biological sampling is coupled with the survey because of the areas status as an MPA. The camera array consists of four housings positioned orthogonally and center mounted at a height of 51 cm above the bottom of the array. Each housing contains a pair of black-and-white Videre stereo cameras along with a color mpeg camera. Sampling of reef sites with video cameras occurs only during daylight hours, with the first gear deployment one hour after sunrise and the last gear retrieval one hour prior to sunset. Video arrays soak for 35 minutes. Habitat mapping was conducted using a multibeam echosounder by USGS. At each site hydrological data is collected using Conductivity Temperature Depth sensor (CTD).

To provide abundance and distribution information on Gulf of Mexico reef fish for use in regional stock assessments.

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Validation routines are applied during data entry to ensure the integrity of data collected. Data validation routines are also applied as data are migrated into the centralized data management system.

Data resides in the laboratories’ centralized database (Oracle). Security patches are applied to the database and host environment immediately after their release. In addition, Security benchmarks are applied to the database and host environment. Data residing in the centralized database (Oracle) is backed up nightly. Backup sets are placed on the laboratories’ Networked Attached Storage (NAS) environment. Security patches/updates are immediately applied to the host environment. Data is stripped/mirrored using RAID 50 technology to protect data from disk failure. Nightly backups are preformed and files are written to magnetic tape and stored in an onsite / offsite location.

Reef fish abundance and size data are generated from videos. An index of abundance for each species is determined as the MaxNo, the maximum number of a taxon that is in the field of view in a single video frame. Fish lengths are determined using laser reference points or stereo video processing. Data are entered into the database.