As part of the Department of Trade and Industry (now Department of Energy and Climate Change) Strategic Environmental Assessment project for Area 5 (SEA5) an environmental survey was carried out in the North Sea (Moray Firth, Southern Trench, Sandy Riddle, Pobie Bank, Braer Study Area, Fair Isle, Papa and Turbot Banks, Smith Bank and JONSIS Transect). The aim of the survey was to acquire biological, physical, and chemical sediment samples together with video and digital stills photography to groundtruth the geophysical data and to enable a general characterisation of seafloor habitats and community types present within a number of offshore areas.
A report is available which provides an overview of the field sampling work undertaken.
565 samples were collected. 47 videos are available. 1073 photographs are available