Given the disdain for the word “weed,” it’s not surprising that seaweed gets such little respect in most developed human cultures. But, we are finding seaweed and its rooted cousin seagrass hold immeasurable value for the future of humankind. Time to get to work mapping it!
Seagrasses are considered vascular plants and have roots, stems, leaves, and flowers. According to a report from the United Nations in 2020, there are more than 70 species across the globe covering over 300,000 km2 (which is likely a vast underestimate) making them one of the most widespread coastal habitats.
Figure 1. Posidonia seagrass growing off the Mediterranean Coast of Spain. See us map it
What is BioBase? BioBase is composed of two different products, EcoSound and EcoSat. Ecosat processes satellite imagery to create shallow vegetation and benthic habitat maps. While, EcoSound uses off-the-shelf sonar technology and automatic cloud processing to create professional bathymetry, bottom composition, and aquatic vegetation maps. BioBase removes the labor intensive and high cost elements of acquiring high quality data very quickly so you can focus your efforts on aquatic resource management.
The Professional Spotlight series is a deep dive into the global BioBase community where we highlight the unique ways sonar driven mapping is assisting research, conservation and sustainability.
The BioBase team sat down with Dr. Chris Harrod for a look into how he uses BioBase. Chris (from the UK) is a full professor of Fish and Aquatic Ecology at the University of Antofagasta in Antofagasta, Chile. He does a mixture of research, teaching, and administration tasks but our interest with him was the applied research techniques for which he was using BioBase. His research is focused on a macroalgae called kelp (aka seaweed) and its importance as a source of food/energy to fish and invertebrates in the coastal zone. He is also interested in how kelp can function as habitat, food, an anchor of sediment and even slow the turbulent waters of the Pacific Ocean.
Guest Blog by Robert M. Baker, CPG, PG (a) and Penelope R. Baker (b)
(a) Professional geologist at RMBAKER LLC and Navico BioBase Ambassador
(b) Stanford University student, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Wildlife Photographer
BioBase is a cloud software that directly supports the preservation of our aquatic environments. Words like preservation and conservation directly imply things like careful planning, measuring and monitoring, treatment and rehabilitation – actionable strategies for the good of animals, plants and natural resources where BioBase can play an important role. BioBase offers an opportunity to observe natural systems, like seagrasses, not easily seen otherwise and does so effortlessly and affordably.
BioBase’s EcoSound is a powerful cloud platform for creating high definition lake or coastal maps of depth, aquatic vegetation (or seagrass), and bottom hardness from Lowrance® and Simrad®
sonar systems. For the user, the process of converting volumes of raw sonar and gps signals into an intuitive map is easy and requires very little input upfront. Record your sonar while out on the water to a microSD card, plug the card into your PC back at the office, log into your BioBase account and upload. Algorithms on remote servers do the rest of the work. However, one of the most frequently overlooked parts of this equation is careful attention to the proper installation of the transducer sensor that is pinging the bottom and collecting all the information below the boat. The importance of proper transducer installation cannot be overstated. If the transducer is not properly placed on the boat or not at the appropriate angle, your BioBase outputs could be inaccurate. Modelers have heard it said many times (sometimes in more colorful language), the quality of the output depends on the quality of the input.
The waters of Western Port in southeastern Australia are a recreational fishing haven and hidden beneath its turbid waters, a unique fragile seafloor community has been newly described. Here, bryozoans, skeleton-forming filter-feeding organisms also known as ‘lace corals’, form expansive areas of reef that support a high diversity and abundance of macroinvertebrates important to snapper and other prized recreational fish species.
Figure 1: Underwater imagery of the bryozoan reefs revealed remarkable biogenic reef structures with abundant invertebrate life surrounded by large areas of bare sediment.
Sonar technology continues to improve bringing anglers and aquatic managers better, more clear pictures of the underwater environment on which they are so intently focused. Launched in 2011, BioBase’s EcoSound technology was the first cloud aquatic mapping system designed to process sonar logs from off-the-shelf Lowrance® sonar and create maps of bathymetry, aquatic vegetation biovolume, and bottom hardness for aquatic resource professionals. Today, BioBase is the leading cloud software solution for automated lake and coastal seagrass mapping.
Between 2011 and 2014, the algorithm underwent five major revisions. The bottom hardness algorithm has undergone two major revisions, with the last one in 2014. Thus, our code base was due for an overhaul in order to maintain performance and compatibility with newer generation Lowrance and Simrad sonar. This refactoring effort was also an opportunity for us to improve the vegetation and bottom hardness algorithms. Many of these improvements also carry over sister consumer technology C-MAP Genesis, which uses many of the same algorithms and backend processing architecture
Create detailed bathymetric, aquatic, and coastal habitat maps by recording sonar from Lowrance or Simrad sonar devices
At BioBase, we are delighted to announce a new subscription model for EcoSound, created to ensure all customers can make the most out of the mapping platform.
Aligned with parent company Navico’s Environmental Sustainability Mission, and to support the widespread adoption of our technology to further the goals of aquatic conservation, BioBase will be providing free subscriptions (with up to 20 GB of storage) to Environmental Agencies, Non-Profits, and Universities engaged in aquatic resource management and research.
In order to make this a smooth transition for our current subscribers, we will move anyone with an unlimited Single-User or Single-Waterbody subscription into the appropriate full-featured Habitat+ subscription with sufficient storage until their subscription is due to expire in 2021.
FREE Subscriptions for Government, Universities and Environment Agencies
Current subscribers eligible for a free subscription should notice little change outside of being eligible for additional “freemium” subscriptions for their institution
Further, Navico will also be offering discounts of up to 25% on Lowrance hardware for US-Based agencies and universities.
Please visit our plans page https://www.biobasemaps.com/Plans to see the full list of plans, pricing, and features and download a brochure.
