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

A vessel-towed camera platform with unique design features, developed to photograph seafloor habitat types on the continental shelf off southeastern Australia, is described. Photographic images contributed to the evaluation of the importance of habitat types to demersal fishery productivity. The significant features of the towed automatically compensating observation system (TACOS) are: it is a towed system that enables collection of photographic data along transects of several kilometres in length; it provides real-time video to the ship which permits fine operational control and real-time capture 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 submersible camera platforms, based on an easily fabricated framework and commercially available components. The system has been successfully field tested to depths of 190 m in exposed open-ocean conditions.