IMOS - Understanding of Marine Imagery (UMI) Sub-Facility - Australian region - Aggregated kelp data product (2008 - ongoing)

Updated: 2026-05-08

The IMOS Understanding of Marine Imagery Sub-Facility provides a national repository for marine imagery and annotations, facilitating the sharing of quantitative data on species and habitat distributions. Squidle+ serves as the foundational software platform for this sub-facility, providing an end-to-end environment for the delivery, management, and annotation of marine imagery. The platform integrates disparate data sources, including autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), baited remote underwater videos (BRUVs), towed systems, and diver-based photo quadrats (e.g., Reef Life Survey (RLS)), by standardising formats and enabling cross-walks between different label vocabularies. This ensures unified datasets that can be synthesised at a national scale across diverse research projects. This specific product aggregates kelp-related annotations from public Squidle+ surveys, translated into the Darwin Core standard for enhanced interoperability. Data are filtered via a curated allow-list, taxonomically aligned with the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS, https://www.marinespecies.org/about.php#what_is_worms), and normalised temporally and spatially using a H3 index. Australian Marine Region Tags have also been added which allows spatial filtering of the data based on known marine regions (for example, commonwealth marine regions).The resulting analysis-ready resource supports the study of canopy-forming macroalgae and benthic habitat structure across Australian waters. The allow-list targets canopy-forming and habitat-forming macroalgae from the phylum Ochrophyta, class Phaeophyceae, with particular emphasis on the orders Laminariales and Fucales. Key taxa represented include Ecklonia radiata, Phyllospora comosa, Macrocystis pyrifera, Durvillaea spp., Cystophora spp., Scytothalia dorycarpa, Lessonia corrugata and Perithalia caudata, among others. The geographic occurrence coverage spans the temperate and subtropical coastal waters of southern and eastern Australia, from approximately 113°E to 153°E and 44°S to 27°S, encompassing the major kelp forest ecosystems of the Great Southern Reef, the south-east Australian coast and the eastern seaboard.