Visual Evidence of a Rhodolith/Maërl Bed Coexisting with a Macrocystis pyrifera Kelp Forest in the Beagle Channel (Onashaga, Argentina)

This repository contains raw data supporting the visual documentation and benthic cover estimation of a rhodolith/maërl bed in the Beagle Channel (Onashaga, Argentina), as described in Bravo et al. (2026).

Videos: Two underwater videos documenting the rhodolith/maërl bed recorded on 4 February 2026. The footage includes recordings captured using a Nikon D850 (20260204_NIKOND850.MOV) and an Insta360 X4 camera (20260204_INSTA360.mp4), providing complementary perspectives of the bed structure, spatial extent, nodule morphology, and associated benthic features.

Still frames: Twenty-five frames extracted from the Nikon D850 video at 6-second intervals (20260204_NIKOND850-1.jpg to 20260204_NIKOND850-25.jpg), covering an estimated transect length of ~25 m at approximately 7 m depth. These frames were used for manual benthic cover estimation using Biigle Online (https://biigle.io).

Annotation data : Raw image annotation area report exported from Biigle Online (33275_image_annotation_area_report.xlsx), containing polygon-based annotations of bare substrate (sand and gravel) for each of the 25 frames. Full methodology and results are described in Supplementary Material S2, submitted alongside the manuscript.

All materials were collected during scuba diving surveys conducted in February 2026 as part of the project Kelp Roots: Residency of Coexistence, funded by Mission Blue and the Plum Foundation."