January 24, 2022
BRUV’s in action off Cape Otway
Through the Port Phillip Bay Fund via the Department of Environment Land Water and Planning, Deakin University’s Marine Mapping Group are teaming up with stakeholders across the bay to do a fish diversity assessment using a fleet of baited remote underwater cameras (BRUVS).
BRUVS work by using bait to attract fish, capturing those fish on video, and later analysing the captured footage to describe the fish assemblages that were seen. BRUVS provide a non-destructive, relatively cheap and repeatable method to record the abundance, size and population structure of fishes and other animals.
The team are hoping to deploy at ~150 sites across the bay. BRUVS can be deployed at a range of depths and are able to capture information on commercially important species or ‘diver shy’ species. The team are currently combining images of the seabed, oceanographic data and expert knowledge including those by fishers to target key sites across the bay for deployments.
In Port Phillip bay, they plan to survey a diversity of habitats including natural and artificial reefs, seagrass beds and soft sediment habitats. If you have a site in Port Phillip Bay that you would like to see considered for the project, please contact Daniel Ierodiaconou from Deakin’s Marine Mapping Group.
Deakin Marine Mapping is a group of researchers from Deakin University led by Daniel Ierodiaconou focusing on mapping the seafloor and coastlines of Victoria and beyond.
Other initiatives by Deakin Marine Mapping include free wave and temperature data across the bay and Victorian coast and seabed mapping works that are now available and feeding its way in to navigation products.
If you would like to suggest a location for the project, please send through a coordinate and some details to Daniel Ierodiaconou at [email protected]
Watch the video below to see the BRUV’s in action off Cape Otway.
Fish surveys are underway at Australia’s first offshore wind farm as part of the ongoing environmental analysis process by Deakin University. Watch the BRUV’s in action in Gippsland in the video below.
