BioCam - Mapping of Benthic Biology, Geology and Ecology with Essential Ocean Variables

英国和国际政府需要了解人类活动对深海生态系统的影响，以便就如何为子孙后代保护和保存它们做出明智的决定。特别是，深水珊瑚礁可以被认为是生物活动的热点，在高达~2000米的深度为各种海洋生物群落提供了丰富的栖息地。与此同时，深海珊瑚生长缓慢，需要几千年的时间才能形成这些珊瑚礁，它们很脆弱，对环境的变化极其敏感。因此，如果不能保护它们不受拖网捕捞和工业活动的影响，不仅会对珊瑚的分布产生不可逆转的影响，而且也会对它们所支持的海洋群落的分布产生不可逆转的影响。然而，监测活珊瑚的分布既昂贵又费时。其主要原因是，虽然深水珊瑚稀疏分布在一个大城市大小的区域，但为了可靠地识别它们，需要观察的特征是在厘米的尺度上。此外，颜色经常被用来区分健康的活珊瑚和死珊瑚，这意味着使用水下相机进行直接视觉观察往往是必要的。不幸的是，在水下拍摄图像需要配备相机和强大的照明系统的车辆在海底一到两米的范围内工作。由于在离海底这么近的地方作业的车辆需要避开障碍物，它们的行驶速度只有人类步行速度的五分之一左右。除了这些限制之外，虽然图像可以告诉我们是否存在活珊瑚，但还需要更先进的3D成像方法来告诉我们珊瑚的数量，这对于监测珊瑚数量的变化非常重要。在这个项目中，我们将开发一个3D水下摄像系统，能够测量海底活珊瑚的分布，其面积比目前可能的面积大50倍以上。该系统将使用一对高灵敏度的相机，一个强大的闪光照明系统和一个脉冲激光来获得距离海底近10米（比典型高5倍）范围内的全彩色图像和高分辨率3D形状信息。能够从更远的地方拍摄高分辨率图像将增加单帧可以观察到的区域，也允许水下航行器在更安全的高度运行，因此比以前可能的速度要快得多。此外，3D相机系统获得的图像将被处理成覆盖数百公顷（1公顷= 10,000平方米）面积的大型3D图像景观。这些景观将由使用水下航行器在几天内获得的数十万张海底图像组成。这些景观将为科学家们提供丰富的、可探索的计算机生成的深海环境重建，他们可以利用这些环境来可视化和研究活珊瑚分布的模式，这些模式在由数十万张原始图像帧组成的文件夹中不会立即显现出来。此外，重建将与现有的基于网络的界面兼容，这将有可能使来自世界各地的科学家直接识别活珊瑚，并通过互联网测量它们的大小和分布。在这个项目中开发的技术将允许在空间尺度上研究活珊瑚的分布，这在以前是不可能的。通过几年的重访，该传感器获得的高分辨率数据将有助于更好地了解海底发生的变化，并使我们的政府能够在不损害海洋商业和工业活动的情况下，就保存和保护这些栖息地的最佳策略做出更明智的决定。

The UK and international governments need to understand the effects of human activities on deep-sea ecosystems in order to make well informed decisions on how to protect and preserve them for future generations. In particular, deep-water coral reefs can be thought of a hotspot for biological activity, providing a rich habitat for diverse communities of marine life at depths of up to ~2000 m. At the same time deep-sea corals grow slowly, taking several thousands of years to form these reefs, are fragile and extremely sensitive to changes in the environment. As such, failure to protect them from trawling and industrial activities may have irreversible effects not only on the distribution of coral, but also on the distribution of the marine communities they support. However, monitoring of live coral distribution is expensive and time consuming. The main reason for this is that while deep-water corals are sparsely distributed over areas the size of a large city, the features that need to be observed to identify them reliably are on the scale of centimetres. Furthermore, colour is often used to tell apart healthy live coral from dead coral, which means that direct visual observation using underwater cameras is often necessary. Unfortunately, taking images underwater requires vehicles equipped with cameras and powerful lighting systems to operate within one or two meters of the seafloor. Since vehicles operating this close to the seafloor need to avoid obstacles, they can only travel at about a fifth of the speed people walk. In addition to these limitations, while an image can tell us if live coral is present or not, more advanced 3D imaging methods are needed to also tell us how much coral there is, which is important to know when monitoring changes in their abundance.In this project, we will develop a 3D underwater camera system that is capable of measuring the distribution of live coral on the seafloor over areas that are more than 50 times larger than is currently possible. The system will use a pair of highly sensitivity cameras, a powerful flashed lighting system and a pulsed laser to obtain full colour images and high resolution 3D shape information at a range of almost 10 m (~5 times higher than is typical) from the seafloor. Being able to take high-resolution images from further away will increase the area that can be observed in a single frame and also allow underwater vehicles to operate at safer altitudes and so travel significantly faster than previously possible. Furthermore, images obtained by the 3D camera system will be processed to generate large 3D image landscapes that cover areas of several hundreds of hectares (1 hectare = 10,000m2). These landscapes will each consist of several hundreds of thousands of images of the seafloor obtained over several days using an underwater vehicle. The landscapes will provide scientists with a rich, explorable computer generated reconstruction of deep-sea environments that they can use to visualise and study patterns in the distribution of live coral that would not be immediately obvious in a folder consisting of several hundreds of thousands of raw image frames. Furthermore, the reconstructions will be made compatible with existing web-based interfaces that will potentially allow scientists from all over the world to directly identify live coral and make measurements of their size and distribution over the internet. The technology developed in this project will allow live coral distributions to be studied over spatial scales that were not previously possible. By revisiting sites over several years, the high-resolution data obtained by the proposed sensor will help facilitate a better understand of the changes that take place on the seafloor, and allow our governments to make better informed decisions regarding the best strategies to preserve and protect these habitats without unnecessarily compromising commercial and industrial activities in the ocean.