Baited remote underwater video (BRUV) is a system used in
marine biology
Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms in the sea. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies s ...
research. By attracting fish into the field of view of a remotely controlled camera, the technique records
fish diversity
Fish are very diverse animals and can be categorised in many ways. This article is an overview of some of ways in which fish are categorised. Although most fish species have probably been discovered and described, about 250 new ones are still ...
,
abundance and
behaviour
Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as wel ...
of species. Sites are sampled by video recording the region surrounding a baited canister which is lowered to the bottom from a surface vessel or less commonly by a
submersible
A submersible is a small watercraft designed to operate underwater. The term "submersible" is often used to differentiate from other underwater vessels known as submarines, in that a submarine is a fully self-sufficient craft, capable of ind ...
or
remotely operated underwater vehicle. The video can be transmitted directly to the surface by cable, or recorded for later analysis.
Baited cameras are highly effective at attracting
scavenger
Scavengers are animals that consume dead organisms that have died from causes other than predation or have been killed by other predators. While scavenging generally refers to carnivores feeding on carrion, it is also a herbivorous feeding b ...
s and subsequent
predators,
[Wilson RR Jr, Smith KL Jr (1984) Effect of near-bottom currents on detection of bait by the abyssal grenadier fishes Coryphaenoides spp., recorded in situ with a video camera on a free vehicle. Mar Biol 84:83–91, Henriques C, Priede IG, Bagley PM (2002) Baited camera observations of deep-sea demersal fishes of the northeast Atlantic Ocean at 15–28° N off West Africa. Mar Biol 141: 307–314, in Raymond, Erika H. & Widder, Edith A.''Behavioral responses of two deep-sea fish species to red, far-red, and white light.'' Marine Ecology Progress Series, Vol. 350: 291–298, 2007 ] and are a non-invasive method of generating relative
abundance indices for a number of marine species.
[Brooks, Edward J. Sloman, Katherine A. Sims, David W. Danylchuk, Andy J. (2011) ''Validating the use of baited remote underwater video surveys for assessing the diversity, distribution and abundance of sharks in the Bahamas'' Endangered Species Research, Vol. 13: 231–243, doi: 10.3354/esr00331 https://www.academia.edu/718540/Are_baited_remote_underwater_video_surveys_BRUVS_an_alternative_to_conventional_longline_surveys_for_determining_the_diversity_and_relative_abundance_#]
As a non-extractive technique, it offers a low environmental impact way of understanding changes in fish numbers and diversity over time. BRUV surveys were developed in Australia, and are now used around the world for a variety of projects. This is a low budget monitoring system that is less reliant on the availability of skilled labour and may make sustainable monitoring more practical, over the long term.
[''Baited remote underwater video (BRUV) survey of False Bay’s icthyofauna'' http://www.saeon.ac.za/enewsletter/archives/2013/february2013/doc01 accessed 3 June 2013]
There are two main types of remote video technique which have been used to record
reef fish populations. They can both be left free standing without the need of an operator. The first system uses one downward looking camera (D-BRUV), and the other uses either one (mono) or two (stereo) horizontally facing cameras (H-BRUV),
[Tim Langlois, Pascale Chabanet, Dominique Pelletier, Euan Harvey (2006) ''Baited underwater video for assessing reef fish populations in marine reserves'', SPC Fisheries Newsletter #118 – July/September 2006, 53] and may use underwater lighting to illuminate the target area. Stereo BRUV recordings can use software analysis to determine the size of specimens.
The colour of the lighting used for video may influence behaviour of the target species.
[Raymond, Erika H. & Widder, Edith A.''Behavioral responses of two deep-sea fish species to red, far-red, and white light.'' Marine Ecology Progress Series, Vol. 350: 291–298, 2007 ]
References
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Marine biology