Remotely operated vehicle (ROV) transects collected in 2014 (Polyline Shapefile) southwest and northeast of St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands (NODC Accession 0128255)

This polyline shapefile denotes the location of underwater photos and/or video that were collected by NOAA scientists using a Mohawk ROV (remotely operated vehicle). Photos and/or video were collected between 03/04/2014 to 04/08/2014 along 44 transects southwest and northeast of St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. 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).