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Benthic Habitat Camera System

Georeferenced color video and photo collection of benthic habitats down to 300 meters

CCMA uses the drop camera system to collect photos and video footage with high positional accuracy. This allows for the creation, ground-truthing, and accuracy assessment of spatially explicit benthic habitat maps. The system involves a variety of hardware and software:

Topside
Ultra-Short Baseline (USBL) System and Topside Computer Ultra-Short Baseline (USBL) System and Topside Computer
The TrackLink 1500 MA system consists of a pole-mounted transceiver and a camera-mounted transponder/responder. By measuring the time and angle between initial and reply pulses, and by integrating that information with the shipboard GPS, compass, and motion sensor, a topside computer determines the position of camera on the seafloor.
Real-Time Navigation Real-Time Navigation
By overlaying positional information from the USBL and ship onto digital bathymetric charts in HYPACK software, operators can investigate specific seafloor targets.
Contained Cable Reel (CCR) Contained Cable Reel (CCR)
The CCR tethers the drop camera to the ship and raises and lowers it at variable speeds to a maximum speed of 1 m/s.
Digital Video Laptop Digital Video Laptop
This digital recording deck handles real-time video viewing and storage, and allows for real-time text and audio annotation. Along with text, it also overlays date, time, depth, and location information on the video.
Drop Cage
Shark Marine SV-16R Digital Video Camera Shark Marine SV-16R Digital Video Camera
This advanced camera features automatic aperture control for use in a variety of lighting conditions, high depth of field, and Sony Super HAD CCD with a resolution of greater than 380 TV lines.
SharkEye SC-3 Digital Still Camera SharkEye SC-3 Digital Still Camera Contained Cable Reel (CCR)
Three high quality/low noise image sensors provide between 3 and 14-megapixel images, depending on lighting conditions, in color or grayscale. The camera offers a wide field of view, high depth of field, and close-up detail down to tens of micrometers. It also supports motion capture up to 12 frames/second.
Scaling Lasers and Light Scaling Lasers and Light
Laser diodes set 10 cm let users estimate the size of objects viewed through the cameras. Images are illuminated by two 120/240 volt lights.

Benthic Habitat Camera System Diagram

To view classified images produced with the system see:
http://www8.nos.noaa.gov/bhv/bhvMapBrowser.aspx