Using underwater imagery to improve invasive species monitoring in the Great Lakes

Session: Seeing Below the Surface: Quantifying the Underwater Environment with Image Analysis

Knut Mehler, Great Lakes Center at SUNY Buffalo State, [email protected]
Lyubov Burlakova, Great Lakes Center at SUNY Buffalo State , [email protected]
Alexander Karatayev, Great Lakes Center at SUNY Buffalo State, [email protected]
Maxwell Morgan, Cetacean Marine Inc, [email protected]

Abstract

Underwater imagery has become a popular tool to assess a wide variety of questions in marine and freshwater ecosystems including stationary or towed camera platforms and remotely operated vehicles in combination with hydroacoustics and side scan sonar. I can be used to monitor benthic substrates, delineate benthic habitats, manage benthic resources, designate protected areas such as marine sanctuaries, and monitor the spatial distribution of bottom-dwelling organisms. Here, we show results from surveys from the lower Great Lakes using underwater videos to monitor invasive mollusc Dreissena r. bugensis and fish Neogobius melanostomus. The advantages of underwater imagery over traditional sampling methods include cost and time efficiency, coverage of larger survey areas, and increased accuracy in determining presence/absence. Further, the videos can be imported into an image analysis software to characterize D. r. bugensis aggregations or N. melanostomus size frequencies. By using underwater imagery in tandem with traditional sampling and image processing software, large areas of benthic environments can be surveyed in a non-destructive and time-and cost-efficient way.