Summary

Description

This shapefile denotes the location of underwater video that was collected by NOAA scientists using a SeaViewer drop camera system. Video was collected between 03/18/2010 and 04/05/2010 at 104 locations within two selected areas of seafloor south of St. Thomas and St. John, USVI. These videos will be manually classified into different habitat classes, and integrated with the abiotic data collected by the acoustic SoNAR (sound navigation and ranging) systems to develop a benthic habitat map for the U.S. Caribbean. Habitat maps describe the location of habitat features (in relation to the shoreline), their physical composition and the types of organisms that colonize them. Fundamentally, habitat maps provide critical information about the extent, health and composition of marine resources, which is vital for communicating information about the distribution and abundance of species to resource managers, scientists and the public. Habitat maps also support an increasing number of landscape ecology studies, as well as the process of marine spatial planning, including the design and evaluation of marine protected areas (MPAs).