Identifying marine fish and estimating fish abundance using underwater community observatories

Abstract

Many undergraduate biology students are fascinated by the ocean, marine organisms and how these organisms interact with the environment yet have no access to the marine environment. In this laboratory we bring students from across the world the opportunity to learn about marine fishes from the Pacific Northwest by collecting data from 2019 in an underwater camera from one of Ocean Networks Canada’s cabled observatories. In this hands-on activity, students learn to collect and annotate data from video clips and estimate fish abundance and relative abundance. Students learn to plot their data against temporal variables (month, season, and time of day) and compare how total fish abundance and species-specific fish abundance vary over time.