A vessel-towed camera platform for surveying seafloor habitats of the continental shelf

A vessel-towed camera platform with unique design features, developed to ph otograph seafloor habitat types on the continental shelf off southeastern A ustralia, is described. Photographic images contributed to the evaluation o f the importance of habitat types to demersal fishery productivity. The sig nificant features of the towed automatically compensating observation syste m (TACOS) are: it is a towed system that enables collection of photographic data along transects of several kilometres in length; it provides real-tim e video to the ship which permits fine operational control and real-time ca pture of images and data; it maintains a constant height above the bottom, and can traverse a range of bottom types including high-relief reefs. It is a low-cost system, relative to remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) or submer sible camera platforms, based on an easily fabricated framework and commerc ially available components. The system has been successfully field tested t o depths of 190 m in exposed open-ocean conditions. (C) 1999 Elsevier Scien ce Ltd. All rights reserved.