NOAA Polyline Shapefile - Drop Camera transects, US Caribbean - Western Puerto Rico - Project NF-07-06-USVI-HAB - (2007), UTM 19N NAD83 (NCEI Accession 0131853)

This shapefile denotes the location of underwater photos and/or video that were collected by NOAA scientists using a drop camera system. Photos and/or video were collected between 04/14/2007 and 04/24/2007 at 84 locations around Isla de Mona in Puerto Rico and west of Mayaguez, Puerto Rico in the U.S. Caribbean. These photos and videos will be manually classified into different habitat classes, and integrated with the abiotic data collected by the acoustic sonar (sound navigation and ranging) systems to develop a benthic habitat map for the U.S. Caribbean. Habitat maps describe the location of habitat features (in relation to the shoreline), their physical composition and the types of organisms that colonize them. Fundamentally, habitat maps provide critical information about the extent, health and composition of marine resources, which is vital for communicating information about the distribution and abundance of species to resource managers, scientists and the public. Habitat maps also support an increasing number of landscape ecology studies, as well as the process of marine spatial planning, including the design and evaluation of marine protected areas (MPAs).