Video Transcript: “For the Channel Islands Sanctuary portion of the Sanctuary Quest mission, we are going to be doing a variety of projects. At night, we'll be using sidescan sonar and the purpose of that is to gather information about what is on the sea floor, we're mapping the bottom, where's the rocks, where's the sand, and where's the high relief, low relief areas. The sidescan sonar provides us with a map that has to be interpreted because it's basically a sheet with grays and blacks and whites on it and to know what those colors mean, those shades of gray mean, we need to do ROV surveys where we put this instrument down on the bottom with cameras that can give us pictures of certain portions of the sanctuary. And then we can compare that with what the sidescan gave us, and that way we have a way of interpreting what grays and blacks and light colors mean on the sidescan sonar map. That helps us understand where we might find certain species of fish, invertebrates and that sort of thing. Then that information can be used by managers to help determine what areas need special protection.” Sarah Fangman, Research Coordinator, Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary
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