Original Tender Description
Project Aims: JNCC wishes to commission a contract to undertake the analysis of seabed still imagery collected on the 0923S survey from a drop-frame camera. Seabed imagery will be analysed using the image annotation software BIIGLE. During 0923S imagery data was collected for both MPA monitoring, and ground truthing purposes. The total number of sampled drop camera monitoring stations was 97 and the total number of images after filtering to ensure 40 good quality images per station is 3,880. Analysis of 10 groundtruthing stations with 383 images is to be included as a costed extra only, however the total cost including costed extras must not exceed the stated value of the contract. More detailed metadata will be provided including information from logs and the survey report. Representative images from each station from the 0923S survey are shown in Annex C, and the successful contractor will be provided with access to the 2023 BIIGLE project, the annotated 2023 PBR video imagery and the 2020 PBR seabed imagery to aid with identification. Project Background: JNCC and Marine Directorate (MD) conducted a survey aboard MRV Scotia (0923S) in 2023 to gather evidence to monitor Pobie Bank Reef SAC (PBR) (Figure 1) and inform assessment of the extent and condition of the designated features of the site. This is the second monitoring survey in a repeat timeseries at PBR, three years after the first survey in 2020, and aims to generate comparable results to make long-term conclusions about the condition of the site. PBR is located in the North Sea approximately 20 km east of the Shetland Islands. The site has an area of 966 km2 and a depth ranging of 70 m to 100 m. The designated features of PBR are listed in Table 1. More information on PBR can be found in the JNCC SIC https://jncc.gov.uk/our-work/pobie-bank-reef-mpa/. Deliverables include: Produce a final analysis report including methodology, results, and QA work. Provide substrate and taxonomic image reference collections. (Costed extra) Undertake analysis for an additional 383 still images from 10 groundtruthing stations. (Costed extra) Create a subset of 100 still images annotated for AI model training. Stills processing involves analysis in BIIGLE using specified label trees, image quality assessment, biota annotation, laser point annotation, identification of anthropogenic impacts, and substrate recording. Quality Assurance includes internal QA (minimum 10% of images) and external QA (10% of images).