High-Resolution GigaPan remote camera photography for the quantification of angler metrics and coastal area use

The importance of attaining accurate quantitative data on marine coastal area utilisation in a country such as Australia cannot be overemphasized. Despite management efforts in recent years, Australia’s fisheries have... [ view full abstract ]

The importance of attaining accurate quantitative data on marine coastal area utilisation in a country such as Australia cannot be overemphasized. Despite management efforts in recent years, Australia’s fisheries have suffered from substantial increases in recreational fishing participation, increases in their disposable income and the general disproportionate ratio between Australia’s coastal inhabitants and inland populations. With an ever growing need for accurate, spatially explicit data from area use managers and their ever tightening budgets, cost-effective replacements for direct field observations, such as remote sensing are becoming more sought after. My project seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of using remote gigapixel mosaic imagery to quantify coastal area use and groups therein along with recreational angler metrics across two site locations: Southern Tasmania and Northern Sydney. The GigaPan camera technology, analogous to high-powered binocular counts, utilises a robotic camera mount to systematically shoot and stitch a wide camera field of view with a pixel density typically associated with cosmological simulations. Established methods of direct angler observation via interviews and the ‘bus-route’ method are compared and contrasted with this novel camera technique. Preliminary results, though currently unavailable, are expected to show correlations between traditional approaches (counting and interviews) and Gigapan camera methods. Systematic biases ingrained within the procedures of both methods will be assessed and reported on, along with a practical guideline for this novel technique, should GigaPan results show significant correlations.