Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

This site is currently in beta, and your feedback is helping shape its ongoing development.

NOAA Polyline Shapefile - Drop Camera transects, US Caribbean – Virgin Passage and St. John Shelf - Project NF-03-10-USVI-HAB - (2010), UTM 20N NAD83 (NCEI Accession 0131854)

Published by NOAA's Ocean Service, National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce | Metadata Last Checked: January 31, 2026 | Last Modified: 2010-01-01T00:00:00.000+00:00
This shapefile denotes the location of underwater video that was collected by NOAA scientists using a SeaViewer drop camera system. Video was collected between 03/18/2010 and 04/05/2010 at 104 locations within two selected areas of seafloor south of St. Thomas and St. John, USVI. These 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).

Find Related Datasets

Click any tag below to search for similar datasets

CoRIS_Metadata Seafloor Characterization of the U.S. Caribbean 20490 coral reef benthic habitats reef submerged aquatic vegetation unconsolidated sediments zone geomorphological structure biological cover ground validation transect Geographic Information > Habitats EARTH SCIENCE > Biosphere > Zoology > Corals > Reef Monitoring and Assessment > Mapping > Habitat Mapping USVI US Virgin Islands St. John St. Thomas Culebra Island Vieques Island COUNTRY/TERRITORY > United States of America > U. S. Virgin Islands > U. S. Virgin Islands > U. S. Virgin Islands (17N064W0000) COUNTRY/TERRITORY > United States of America > U. S. Virgin Islands > St. John > St. John (18N064W0011) OCEAN BASIN > Atlantic Ocean > Caribbean Sea > Virgin Islands > Virgin Islands > St. John (18N064W0011) COUNTRY/TERRITORY > United States of America > U. S. Virgin Islands > St. Thomas > St. Thomas (18N064W0033) COUNTRY/TERRITORY > United States of America > Puerto Rico > Vieques > Vieques Island (18N065W0002) OCEAN BASIN > Atlantic Ocean > Caribbean Sea /North Atlantic Ocean > Puerto Rico > Culebra Island (18N065W0011) OCEAN BASIN > Atlantic Ocean > Caribbean Sea > Virgin Islands > Lesser Antilles > U. S. Virgin Islands (17N064W0000) OCEAN BASIN > Atlantic Ocean > Caribbean Sea > Virgin Islands > Leeward Islands > St. Thomas (18N064W0033) COUNTRY/TERRITORY > United States of America > Puerto Rico > Culebra Island (18N065W0011) OCEAN BASIN > Atlantic Ocean > Caribbean Sea /North Atlantic Ocean > Puerto Rico > Vieques Island > Vieques Island (18N065W0002)

data.gov

An official website of the GSA's Technology Transformation Services

Looking for U.S. government information and services?
Visit USA.gov