An underwater imagery identification guide for shallow, mesophotic and deep-sea benthos in Maldives
Amjad, Farah, Ahusan, Mohamed, Amir, Hana, de Villiers, Nina M., Gress, Erika, Mah, Christopher L., Naeem, Shafiya, Rico-Seijo, Nuria, Samaai, Toufiek, Afzal, Maryiam S., Woodall, Lucy C., and Stefanoudis, Paris V. (2024) An underwater imagery identification guide for shallow, mesophotic and deep-sea benthos in Maldives. Biodiversity Data Journal, 12. e120128.
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Abstract
Background During the 2022 Nekton Maldives Mission, we deployed a variety of platforms (snorkelling, remotely-operated vehicles and manned submersibles) to conduct video surveys of the biodiversity and composition of shallow (< 30 m), mesophotic (30-150 m) and deep-sea (> 150 m) benthos found in the Maldives’ central and southern atolls. In total, ~ 80 hrs of stereo-video footage were collected during the benthic transect surveys, which were subsequently processed using annotation software in order to evaluate benthic biodiversity and community composition. Here, we present a photographic guide for the visual, in situ identification of reef benthos encountered, including corals, sponges and other invertebrates that inhabit Maldives’ nearshore habitats. We hope that this identification guide will aid future imagery-based surveys or observations of organisms during fieldwork. New information A total of 283 morphotypes were identified, including those belonging to Octocorallia (61), Scleractinia (57), Porifera (38), Asteroidea (22), Antipatharia (15), Decapoda (13), Hydrozoa (12), Holothuroidea (10), Actiniaria (9), Echinoidea (8), Annelida (6), Chlorophyta (5), Gastropoda (4), Bivalvia (4), Ascidiacea (3), Crinoidea (3), Bryozoa (2), Cyanobacteria (2), Zoantharia (2), Cephalopoda (1), Ceriantharia (1), Corallimorpharia (1), Ctenophora (1), Ophiuroidea (1), Rhodophyta (1) and to an unknown category (1). Out of these, we identified 40 to species level, 120 to genus, 47 to family, 14 to order and suborder, 58 to class and subclass, two to phylum and one was of unknown phylum. This represents the first attempt to catalogue the mesophotic and deep-sea benthic megafaunal diversity in the Maldives using underwater imagery.
| Item ID: | 87525 |
|---|---|
| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1314-2828 |
| Keywords: | benthos, coral reefs, deep-sea, Indian Ocean, Maldives, mesophotic coral ecosystems, morphotype |
| Copyright Information: | © Amjad F et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Dec 2025 23:53 |
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