Sea-bed photographs (benthos) from the AWI-Hausgarten area along OFOS profile PS62/191-1 ...

• Main Authors: Soltwedel, Thomas, von Juterzenka, Karen, Premke, Karin, Klages, Michael
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA 2003
• Subjects: Hausgarten; Ocean Floor Observation System; ARK-XVIII/1; Polarstern; Archive of Underwater Imaging AUI; Long-term Investigation at AWI-Hausgarten off Svalbard Hausgarten; Svalbard
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.1594/pangaea.227671; https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.227671

Although the use of deep-sea imagery considerably increased during the last decades, reports on nekton falls to the deep seafloor are very scarce. Whereas there are a few reports describing the finding of whale carcasses in the deep north-eastern and south-eastern Pacific, descriptions of invertebrate or vertebrate food-falls at centimetre to metre scale are extremely rare. After 4 years of extensive work at a deep-sea long-term station in northern polar regions (AWI-"Hausgarten"), including large-scale visual observations with various camera systems covering some 10 000 m2 of seafloor at water depths between 1250 and 5600 m, this paper describes the first observation of a fish carcass at about 1280 m water depth, west off Svålbard. The fish skeleton had a total length of 36 cm and an approximated biomass of 0.5 kg wet weight. On the basis of in situ experiments, we estimated a very short residence time of this particular carcass of about 7 h at the bottom. The fast response of the motile deep-sea scavenger ... : Cable-operated drifting camera frame Ocean Floor Observation system (OFOS). System details: Still camera 35 mm (Benthos), Kodak Ectachrome 100 Asa colour slide film, B/w video camera (DeepSea Power & Light), two flashes (600W/s), Distance of laser points: 0.5 mDeployment details: Drift velocity: approx. 0.5 knots, Distance to seafloor: approx. 1.5 m ...