Following the successful summer baseline campaign, GAIA Marine returned in winter to complete an expanded benthic habitat survey of over 250 line kms, delivering repeatable towed-camera acquisition, georeferenced imagery and high-resolution metadata across a revised marine infrastructure survey area.
The winter campaign built directly on the earlier summer survey, using the operational knowledge, survey methodology and data-processing framework established during the initial phase. GAIA Marine mobilised its purpose-built tow-camera system with multiple fixed cameras, live-view capability, lighting, depth and altitude sensors, parallel lasers, vertical control thrusters and GNSS navigation support. This allowed the field team to maintain controlled camera altitude, vessel speed and transect alignment while adapting to winter survey conditions and variable water clarity.
Together, the summer and winter campaigns demonstrate GAIA Marine’s ability to support staged environmental monitoring programs, not just one-off survey tasks. By combining repeatable field methods, advanced camera systems, in-house processing and transparent metadata structures, GAIA provided a consistent evidence base that could be used to compare survey phases, refine environmental understanding and support defensible approvals documentation.