Evidence of a Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem documented via tourist submarine off Cape Well-Met, Vega Island, Eastern Antarctic Peninsula (Subarea 48.1) - Multimedia

• Main Authors: Lockhart, Susanne, Izendooren, Remy
• Format: Moving Image (Video)
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Occurrence; Observation; Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem; VME; CCAMLR; Antarctica; Sponges; Sea fans/sea whips; Sea anemones; Lamp shells; Sea squirts; Antarctic; Antarctic Peninsula; Vega Island; Well - Met; Cape Well-met; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://zenodo.org/record/6772141; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6772141

Video evidence of a Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem (VME) was collected via submarine deployed by the tourist super-yacht MY Scenic Eclipse flagged with Malta. The dive was conducted on the 29th November 2019 within Subarea 48.1. The video of this resource supplements the dataset "Evidence of a Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem documented via tourist submarine off Cape Well-Met, Vega Island, Eastern Antarctic Peninsula (Subarea 48.1) - data'' available at https://ipt.biodiversity.aq/resource?r=cape-well-met_2019. Method step description: Video evidence of a Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem (VME) was collected via submarine deployed by the tourist super-yacht MY Scenic Eclipse flagged with Malta. Recordings begin at the greatest depth and continue as the submarine travels up the wall. Footage was taken with a GoPro Hero 7 Black mounted in the pilot window of a U-Boat Worx Cruise Sub 7-300 (https://www.uboatworx.com/model/cruisesub). Four submarine dives were filmed. Prior to footage clean-up it was decided that the longest resulting video would be the one that would be analysed. Footage of each of these dives were provided in multiple files. Final Cut Pro X was first used to join the files into one video file per dive. The videos were then cropped to remove the edge of the pilot’s window frame and to adjust the colour balance. Clean-up then followed the same methodology as was used for analyzing the submarine footage for the successful nomination of four VMEs in WG-EMM-18/35 to remove unusable sequences. For the Cape Well-Met footage that meant the removal of any sequences where the submarine was too far from the wall, where the visibility was poor and when the submarine was paused. Footage from Dive C was the longest resulting video after the completion of this clean-up procedure, thus it became the footage that was analysed. This project is funded by The Soap and The Sea, a Swiss organic and ocean-friendly soap enterprise that donates half of its profits to Ocean Conservation initiatives.