Images from Meso- and Bathypelagic Surveys in the Gully Marine Protected Area: V: Cephalopods
Description
During 2007–10, Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans conducted a series of four midwater-trawl surveys, at meso- and bathypelagic depths, in The Gully – a very large submarine canyon incised into the Scotian Shelf, immediately east of Sable Island, the core of which has been encompassed within a Marine Protected Area since 2004. The surveys followed a fixed-station, depth-stratified design, with replicate sets both in daylight and at night. Most sampling used International Young Gadoid Pelagic Trawls (IYGPTs) –open nets with 60 m² mouth area– worked on double-oblique profiles. From the 2008 survey, the trawls were fitted with rigid (“aquarium”) codends and successfully took a number of delicate specimens in exceptional condition. Full details of the field methodologies have been presented by Kenchington et al. (2009, 2014) , while a report on the cephalopods captured is in preparation. Anticipating that many rarely-seen species would be captured, a variety of camera systems were taken to sea on the Gully surveys and an attempt was made to capture images of every species taken, while the at-sea data-capture protocols emphasized visual recording of cephalopods – at least 38 species of which were captured. The resulting image collection has been catalogued and lightly edited (removing duplicates and unfocused or otherwise valueless images), while erring on the side of retaining any image that might prove useful in the future. Almost all of those retained are in their original formats and resolutions. The present collection includes the 402 catalogued images of cephalopods from all four surveys and a catalogue of them. Individual images are uniquely numbered (from S07001 to S07130, S08001 to S08014, S09001 to S09088 and S10001 to S10170 – the first two digits in each case indicating the survey year). There are corresponding entries in the catalogue, which presents the contents of each image (typically only a species name, though some entries have more details) and such other image-specific details as are available. Not all images can be linked to particular specimens but, for those which can be, catalogue entries include cross-references to the survey-program’s catch database, which provides further details on the specimens concerned. All images © His Majesty the King in Right of Canada, 2022. Amongst the named authors, the surveys were led by Trevor Kenchington, who also catalogued the images and, working with Cam Lirette, presented them here. Elizabeth Shea provided all specimen identifications, captured most of the images and assisted with their cataloguing. Other images were taken by Bill MacEachern, Kevin MacIsaac, Merlin Best or Andrew Cogswell.