Newfoundland Marine Refuge Fish Classification Dataset (N-MARINE)

N-MARINE is a marine-taxa detection and classification dataset collected in 2021 using underwater video cameras mounted on crab pots equipped with lights and bait, deployed at depths of 400–500 m within a small portion of the Northeast Newfoundland Slope Closure. Further details on survey design and acquisition procedures are provided in [1]. The dataset contains 23,936 high-resolution images (1920 × 1080 px; ~1 MB per image; ~30 GB total), each annotated with bounding boxes and species labels. Nine marine species are documented, and images may contain multiple individuals per frame.

N-MARINE is a curated subset of 185 videos drawn from a larger corpus of 221 videos originally collected to study the impacts of seismic activity. Each video is approximately five minutes long, recorded at 30 fps. From each video, 1,500 frames were annotated, but only a subset of these annotated frames is included in the open-source release, resulting in a total of 23,936 images in the dataset. A single Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) ecologist annotated all images in DIVE [2], labeling all visible organisms, including partially occluded and truncated individuals.

Images are organized by source video, and filenames/metadata encode both the video identifier and frame index, enabling users to determine whether images originate from the same or different videos. For each species, up to 3,000 positive images were randomly sampled, with all available images included when fewer than 3,000 examples existed. Additionally, 3,000 negative (background) images were randomly sampled from across the 185 videos. Annotations are provided only in YOLO-style per-video CSV files, which include both absolute pixel coordinates and normalized coordinates for each bounding box.

Morris, C. J., Ayyagari, K. D., Porter, D., Nguyen, Q. K., Hanlon, J., & Whidden, C. (2025). Newfoundland Marine Refuge Fish Classification Dataset (N-Marine). Government of Canada Open Data Portal. https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/2ae46860-f82a-4127-bb1f-b02e36ef6a70

Funding was provided by Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the Environmental Studies Research Fund.

References [1] Corey Morris, Joshua Barnes, Dustin Schornagel, Christopher Whidden, and Phillippe Lamontagne. Measuring effects of seismic surveying on groundfish resources off the coast of newfoundland, canada. Journal of Ocean Technology, 16(3):57–63. [2] VIAME Contributors. VIAME: Video and Image Analytics for Marine Environments, 5 2017.

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Additional Info

Field Value
Last Updated October 20, 2025, 02:15 (UTC)
Created October 20, 2025, 02:15 (UTC)
Domain / Topic
Domain or topic of the dataset being cataloged.
Biota, Oceans
Title
Title for the Dataset.
Newfoundland Marine Refuge Fish Classification Dataset (N-MARINE)
Description
A description of the dataset.

N-MARINE is a marine-taxa detection and classification dataset collected in 2021 using underwater video cameras mounted on crab pots equipped with lights and bait, deployed at depths of 400–500 m within a small portion of the Northeast Newfoundland Slope Closure. Further details on survey design and acquisition procedures are provided in [1]. The dataset contains 23,936 high-resolution images (1920 × 1080 px; ~1 MB per image; ~30 GB total), each annotated with bounding boxes and species labels. Nine marine species are documented, and images may contain multiple individuals per frame.

N-MARINE is a curated subset of 185 videos drawn from a larger corpus of 221 videos originally collected to study the impacts of seismic activity. Each video is approximately five minutes long, recorded at 30 fps. From each video, 1,500 frames were annotated, but only a subset of these annotated frames is included in the open-source release, resulting in a total of 23,936 images in the dataset. A single Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) ecologist annotated all images in DIVE [2], labeling all visible organisms, including partially occluded and truncated individuals.

Images are organized by source video, and filenames/metadata encode both the video identifier and frame index, enabling users to determine whether images originate from the same or different videos. For each species, up to 3,000 positive images were randomly sampled, with all available images included when fewer than 3,000 examples existed. Additionally, 3,000 negative (background) images were randomly sampled from across the 185 videos. Annotations are provided only in YOLO-style per-video CSV files, which include both absolute pixel coordinates and normalized coordinates for each bounding box.

Morris, C. J., Ayyagari, K. D., Porter, D., Nguyen, Q. K., Hanlon, J., & Whidden, C. (2025). Newfoundland Marine Refuge Fish Classification Dataset (N-Marine). Government of Canada Open Data Portal. https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/2ae46860-f82a-4127-bb1f-b02e36ef6a70

Funding was provided by Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the Environmental Studies Research Fund.

References [1] Corey Morris, Joshua Barnes, Dustin Schornagel, Christopher Whidden, and Phillippe Lamontagne. Measuring effects of seismic surveying on groundfish resources off the coast of newfoundland, canada. Journal of Ocean Technology, 16(3):57–63. [2] VIAME Contributors. VIAME: Video and Image Analytics for Marine Environments, 5 2017.
Tags / Keywords
Keywords/tags categorizing the dataset.
Format (CSV, XLS, TXT, PDF, etc)
File format of the dataset.
Dataset Size
Dataset size in megabytes.
Metadata Identifier
Metadata identifier – can be used as the unique identifier for catalogue entry
Published Date
Published date of the dataset.
2025-01-01
Time Period Data Span (start date)
Start date of the data in the dataset.
Time Period Data Span (end date)
End date of time data in the dataset.
GeoSpatial Area Data Span
A spatial region or named place the dataset covers.
Field Value
Access category
Type of access granted for the dataset (open, closed, service, etc).
License
License used to access the dataset.
Open Government Licence - Canada
Limits on use
Limits on use of data.
Location
Location of the dataset.
https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/2ae46860-f82a-4127-bb1f-b02e36ef6a70
Data Service
Data service for accessing a dataset.
Owner
Owner of the dataset.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada | Pêches et Océans Canada
Contact Point
Who to contact regarding access?
Government of Canada; Fisheries and Oceans Canada, [email protected]
Contact Point Email
The email to contact regarding access?
Publisher
Publisher of the dataset.
Publisher Email
Email of the publisher.
[email protected]
Author
Author of the dataset.
Author Email
Email of the author.
Accessed At
Date the data and metadata was accessed.
Field Value
Identifier
Unique identifier for the dataset.
Language
Language(s) of the dataset
Link to dataset description
A URL to an external document describing the dataset.
Persistent Identifier
Data is identified by a persistent identifier.
Globally Unique Identifier
Data is identified by a persistent and globally unique identifier.
Contains data about individuals
Does the data hold data about individuals?
Contains data about identifiable individuals
Does the data hold identifiable data about individual?
Contains Indigenous Data
Does the data hold data about Indigenous communities?
Portal Type
Platform type of the source portal.
Field Value
Version
Version of the datatset
None
Source
Source of the dataset.
None
Version notes
Version notes about the dataset.
Is version of another dataset
Link to dataset that it is a version of.
Other versions
Link to datasets that are versions of it.
Provenance Text
Provenance Text of the data.
Provenance URL
Provenance URL of the data.
Temporal resolution
Describes how granular the date/time data in the dataset is.
GeoSpatial resolution in meters
Describes how granular (in meters) geospatial data is in the dataset.
GeoSpatial resolution (in regions)
Describes how granular (in regions) geospatial data is in the dataset.
Field Value
Indigenous Community Permission
Who holds the Indigenous Community Permission. Who to contact regarding access to a dataset that has data about Indigenous communities.
Community Permission
Community permission (who gave permission).
The Indigenous communities the dataset is about
Indigenous communities from which data is derived.
Field Value
Number of data rows
If tabular dataset, total number of rows.
Number of data columns
If tabular dataset, total number of unique columns.
Number of data cells
If tabular dataset, total number of cells with data.
Number of data relations
If RDF dataset, total number of triples.
Number of entities
If RDF dataset, total number of entities.
Number of data properties
If RDF dataset, total number of unique properties used by the triples.
Data quality
Describes the quality of the data in the dataset.
Metric for data quality
A metric used to measure the quality of the data, such as missing values or invalid formats.

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