La revista Marine and Freshwater Research acaba de aceptar la publicación de un artículo sobre una comparativa de censos mediante buceadores, ROV y cámaras de video remoto (RUV).
| Short-term performance of three underwater sampling techniques for assessing differences in the absolute abundances and in the inventories of the coastal fish communities of the Northeast Atlantic Ocean |
| Pablo Pita, Diana Fernández-Márquez y Juan Freire |
| Abstract |
| Comparative works on sampling techniques allow selecting the best methods to study each target fish community. We analysed the structure of a coastal fish community in Galicia (NW Spain) comparing three techniques: diver-based underwater visual census (UVC), remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and remote underwater video (RUV). All the techniques detected abundant and frequent taxa, but divers obtained more precise and complete inventories (80% of identified taxa) than ROV (60%) and RUV (47%); fasters (only 1.4 days to achieve the estimated taxa list), compared to ROV (2.0 days) and RUV (475.7 days); and were more reliable to estimate the abundances of highly mobile, less abundant, less frequent, cryptic and smaller fish. Conversely, RUV obtained the poorest estimates of abundances, and though obtained more replicates (136), obtained more zeros (98%), compared with divers (16 replicates, 64% zeros) and ROV (11 replicates, 75% zeros). Furthermore, the economic cost of the video systems tripled the cost of the diving gears, consequently we recommend using divers to study the coastal fish communities in the shallow waters of the North Atlantic Ocean. However, further research is necessary to explore the full capabilities of video techniques in long-term studies, in great depths or in adverse weather conditions. |
| MF12301 Accepted 02 July 2013 |