Hobart reflections - draft documents

Luke Edwards

23/07/2012

During the first week of July, I attended AMSA-NZMSS 2012 which was a joint conference between the Australian Marine Sciences Association Inc. and the New Zealand Marine Science Society member organisations held in Hobart. The purpose was to present CATAMI to a wider audience and hopefully gain some feedback and new partners.

Hobart - morning view over breakfast

This was accomplished with CATAMI gaining interest from a number of new organisations in Australia and New Zealand. There is a growing consensus between the organisations that collect underwater imagery that greater collaboration is key to ensuring optimal utility from this data. On the Friday, there was a meeting at CSIRO that built upon feedback from the week and discussed the incorporation of CAAB codes into standard classifications.

As discussed in a previous post, it is critical to get a standard classification for both the 'WHAT' and 'HOW' of underwater imagery collection, so we can start the process of aggregating this data.

An important feature is the hierarchical structure. This enables researchers to go into as much detail as desired for project specific purposes but allows a common 'higher' level classification for comparison across Australia.

The next step in this process is to circulate these classifications more widely to get feedback from a wider cross-section of the marine community. We will also compile a catalogue of example images for the classifications developed as well.

Please find links to 4 documents below:

a) Draft standardised hierarchical classifications for scoring taxonomy / substrate
b) Draft standardised methodology and tools for collecting imagery.

Note these documents are still a work in-progress and we are publishing to gather your input. Please feel free to review and provide any feedback with the following questions in mind.

1) How do these classifications compare to your own organisation's classifications - are you able to map to these hierarchies (one-to-one)?

2) Does the method your organisation currently uses to score imagery exist in the draft document(s)?

3) Are there any other obvious omissions?

I would like to thank all the researchers who have volunteered their time so far on creating these draft classifications - it is great being involved in such a truly collaborative project.

- Franzis Althaus (CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research)
- Keith Hayes (NERP / CSIRO Marine Atmospheric Research)
- Nicole Hill and other researchers at (IMAS)
- Mark Case (AIMS)
- Jamie Colquhoun (AIMS)
- Rachel Przeslawski (GA)
- Alan Jordan (NSW Govt)
- Ty Hibberd (Australian Antarctic Division)
- Ariell Friedman (Uni. of Sydney)
- Oscar Pizarro (Uni of Sydney)
- Stefan Williams (Uni of Sydney)