Constellation, le dépôt institutionnel de l'Université du Québec à Chicoutimi

Résumé

Benthic ecosystems of most continental shelves, slopes and seamounts are altered by the use of bottom-contact fishing gears and other human activities, such as hydrocarbon drilling and seabed mining. Such activities can impact the structure and function of benthic habitats directly and indirectly. The GeoHab international symposium defines benthic habitat mapping as representing physically distinct areas of the sea-floor that are associated with a particuIar assemblage of species. A new image mosaicking method can facilitate benthic species count recorded from ROV video data. The method creates image mosaics from overlapping images, helping the video data analyst to avoid counting individual organisms twice when an area is surveyed a second time. This improves the accuracy of species distribution maps used to produce benthic habitat maps. High-resolution videos also provide relatively accurate views of the seafloor, which can be used to corroborate or complete data collected using other technologies, such as multibeam echosounder systems.