DY200 The Canyons MCZ Drop Camera Hire

Project Aims

JNCC wishes to commission to hire a deep sea drop-down underwater HD camera and a scientist\scientists for the NERC funded DY200 survey.

• Project Summary

JNCC has been invited to collect imagery and video data on an upcoming survey to the Canyons MCZ led by the National Oceanographic Centre (NOC), aboard the RRS Discovery as part of the DY200 expedition.

The Canyons MCZ is in the far south-west corner of the UK continental shelf and is unique within the context of England's largely shallow seas due to its depth, sea-bed topography and the coral features it contains.

The aim of this project is to collect seabed imagery data to contribute future assessments of feature condition in the Canyons MCZ. The results will be used to develop recommendations for future monitoring, including the operational testing of specific metrics which may indicate whether the condition of the feature has been maintained, is improving or is in decline.

Figure 1 Location of The Canyons with existing multibeam data from previous surveys to The Canyons MCZ from the MESH 2007, JC125 (2015) and JC237 (2022) surveys, and EMODnet bathymetry.

• Project Objectives
• Hire and insure a deep-water HD Drop Camera System for the DY200 survey on the RSS Discovery including transport of the drop camera to and from the RSS Discovery.
• Provide appropriate lights and lasers for the camera system
• Provide a scientist or scientists to operate the camera system and address any technical issues on board the vessel as required.
• Provide a MEDIN compliant metadata proforma for the drop camera imagery tows.
• Provide a GIS shapefile of drop camera stations visited on the survey
• Provide processed video and still imagery data collected on the survey (format tbc).
• Outputs

JNCC require the analysis results in the MEDIN compliant MS Excel proforma spreadsheet which will be provided.

Locations of video tows should be provided as ArcGIS & QGIS compatible polyline shapefiles.

Output/deliverable Format

Deep Sea HD drop camera The camera will be available for use during the DY200 survey (23rd September - 12th October 2025).

Drop camera video and still imagery metadata

MEDIN compliant MS Excel metadata proforma spreadsheet of drop camera tows collected on the vessel

Locations of drop camera video tows Shapefiles

Processed Video and still imagery data collected during the survey. Format to be agreed at the start up meeting

Although not a direct output of this contract, NOC will provide JNCC with a copy of the DY200 cruise report which will provide a summary of the DY200 survey operations.