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YouTube videos showcase deep-sea life within Newfoundland and Labrador’s marine conservation areas
Click the map below to view underwater baited camera deployments in various marine refuges and offshore locations around Newfoundland.
Have you ever wondered what lives 250 m, 500 m, 1500 m, or 2500 m below Canada’s Atlantic Ocean surface? Are you keen to see—via YouTube—the same video images that scientists use to explore and assess Canada’s deep-sea marine conservation areas?
If so, welcome to this site where our science team from the Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland has curated and compiled 60 video segments from spatially-referenced deployments of baited underwater camera landers. Deployments spanned a wide range of depths (126 m – 2500 m) within large marine conservation areas offshore from Canada’s easternmost province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Clicking on a station provides a pop-up box and brief descriptions of the video segment(s), including key critters ‘captured’ on camera at the bait station.
Enjoy these undersea videos!
The video segments posted represent a small selection from our larger collection of hundreds of hours of baited camera footage among these 60 deployments. At most sites, two videos have been posted, often showing two different (if arbitrary) times, or some special observation(s) of fish within that deployment. Invertebrates of all sizes also abound in these waters – also attracted to the scent of bait. Keen observers will note differences in fish species attracted to the bait at different depths, with the shallowest and deepest stations having very few observed fish species in common. Similar patterns of species turnover have been reported from our past deployments of this type of camera system to estimate fish and invertebrate diversity in the eastern Canadian Arctic. If you are interested in learning more about a particular fish species or those within specific territories or ecosystems, you can search for it via Fishbase.
The videos were generated via a baited remote underwater video (BRUV) system that is made up of a few different parts. The camera system consists of a 4K/HD recorder that is rated to 6000 m, illuminated by a bright white LED light and accompanied by parallel lasers on top of the camera that are spaced at 10 cm apart to provide a constant measurement scale for anything crossing both lasers. This system is powered by a large battery that can provide power for up to 8-10 hours of recordings.
All components are secured to strong aluminum lander frame with the camera at the top, the light and battery at the mid-point, and a bait-arm that sticks into the camera view and near the path of the lasers. The bait arm holds about 6 squid, with 3 on a heavy wire, and the others inside an orange bait bag. Links of heavy steel chain tied to the lander frame keep the unit securely on the seafloor, while plenty of strong rope secured to the top of the lander fame reaches the surface where large orange floats and a pole-mounted locator beacon bob and drift, providing visual and navigational targets for recovery of the lander system.
These techniques were deployed by our team in the eastern Canadian Arctic to quantify the diversity of fish and invertebrates within Arctic benthic habitats and to provide first local abundance estimates of otherwise elusive deep-sea Greenland sharks – a species that also shows up in some of the videos posted here.
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