Closeout Report -- remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and scientific scuba divers: A methods comparison to optimize bull kelp conservation and restoration in Puget Sound
Year: 2026
Type: report
Abstract: Bull kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana) forests provide essential habitat throughout Puget Sound, yet substantial knowledge gaps remain regarding the understory communities, substrate conditions, and environmental factors that support their persistence and recovery. Through this subaward, the Seattle Aquarium partnered with Reef Check and Puget Sound Restoration Fund to evaluate how small, modular remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) can complement scientific SCUBA surveys and inform bull kelp conservation and restoration. We developed an open-source ROV survey framework integrating standardized field protocols and high-resolution benthic imaging, telemetry-processing workflows, machine-learning classification through CoralNet-Toolbox, and human verification through Kelp Quest on Zooniverse. We completed paired ROV–diver surveys, evaluated ROV monitoring of bull kelp outplants, and developed a Central Puget Sound bull kelp habitat-suitability model to help identify candidate restoration areas. Our results demonstrate that divers remain indispensable for detecting cryptic and concealed organisms and for operating within dense canopy-forming kelp, whereas ROVs excel at collecting spatially extensive, repeatable percent-cover observations of visible algae, substrate, and colonial invertebrates. Notably, the ROV and divers agreed closely for coastal vegetation: red and green algal percent cover matched in both overall amount and pattern across transects, sugar kelp and sieve kelp were strongly correlated between platforms, and this agreement held even after between-site variation was removed, validating the ROV as a monitoring platform for kelp and other marine vegetation. Together, these complementary approaches provide a more comprehensive framework for benthic monitoring, while the project’s open-source hardware, analytical workflows, and decision-support tools create a framework that can be adapted by Tribal, agency, academic, and nonprofit partners working to advance Puget Sound habitat recovery.
Institution: Seattle Aquarium
Language: English
Subfield: Oceanography
Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Life below water
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7214780605