The limited accessibility to the deep-sea results in a under estimation of biodiversity as rare species are not properly sampled, especially in... » More

The limited accessibility to the deep-sea results in a under estimation of biodiversity as rare species are not properly sampled, especially in abyssal plain characterized by low densities. Long-term and continuous observations of the seafloor using undersea cabled observatories will contribute to the sampling effort needed to better document marine biodiversity. NEPTUNE Canada (NC) regional ocean network (off Vancouver Island, BC, Canada) is instrumented with 6 camera systems located in depth ranging between 20 m and 980 m, and 2 additional systems will be deployed during the summer 2011 on the Endeavour Ridge segment. Those video systems are daily operated and generate a huge amount of imagery data, including both still pictures and videos, raising the need to involve scientists and general public from all over the world to help document this growing imagery archive. NC is currently developing an annotation system and a crowd-sourcing project, 'Digital Fisher', developed in order to involve the general public in the census of life in our oceans. Those two projects will contribute to the building of a common database, accessible through the NC website.

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