CATAMI classification scheme for scoring marine biota and sub-strata in underwater imagery. Version 1.4.

Abstract

Transforming raw underwater imagery into quantitative information useful for science and policy decisions requires substantial manual effort by human experts. This process will soon become unsustainable as the volume of imagery being collected continues to increase due to technological advances in the acquisition and resolution of imagery. Currently there is a lack of standardised approaches to the methodology, annotation, classification and analysis of this imagery. This makes comparison across disparate sites as well as further analysis very difficult. The CATAMI (Collaborative and Annotation Tools for Analysis of Marine Imagery and video) project aims to help solve some of these issues by working with the NERP Marine Biodiversity Hub Theme 1 and the marine community to develop a standard classification scheme for scoring marine biota and physical characteristics from underwater imagery. There is a growing consensus between organisations that collect underwater imagery that greater collaboration is key to ensuring optimal utility from this data. A standardised classification scheme will assist the whole marine community by enabling aggregation, annotation and automated processing of imagery thereby saving resources and maximising the use of the limited number of taxonomic staff. This document will outline the background to this classification and how it will be implemented to ensure researchers make best use of the great variety of imagery from Baited Remote Underwater Video (BRUV), Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV), Towed Video / Imagery (TV/TI), Diver Operated Video (DOV) and Photo Quadrats.