Equipment Description: The TOAD was deployed from the lower arm of the vessel's J-frame. The TOAD is a camera sled based on the Guildline MiniBat model 8820 tow body. The frame has been extensively modified from its original configuration and was configured with a single ROS model 54-00100-13 color underwater video camera and two 500 W DeepSea Power & Light model 710-0400601 underwater lights mounted on the original sled frame. The MiniBat pressure sensor and wing controller was also mounted on the frame but no wings were installed. Cable between the sled and the surface consisted of an underwater electrical cable (cable 1, blue in color) with a separate load-bearing line to support the sled frame. The electrical cable was clipped to the line at regular intervals upon deployment and removed upon recovery. The load-bearing line was led to the starboard capstan on the aft deck. All TOAD surface components were located in the Dry Lab in an equipment rack on the after bulkhead.
Name & address of person collecting data: John Rooney NOAA IRC NMFS/PIFSC/CRED 1845 WASP Blvd., Building 176 Honolulu, HI 96818
Data Files: Video data were recorded on two video tape recorders. The position of the camera sled was recorded using Hypack Max version 02.012a survey software.
File naming convention: Each tow is given a name consisting of a 3-letter designator for the island area followed by a two-digit year and three-digit tow number. For example, during HI0504 the first tow was called MOL05000. Video tape labels and paper log forms are all annotated with the tow name. Data files recorded in Hypack software followed their CHS filename format consisting of the year, the first two letters of the platform name, the Julian date, and the hour and minute in which the file was started. For example, a file collected on July 18, 2005 (Julian date 199) aboard the Hi'ialakai starting at time 1935 would be 2005HI1991935.
Time Correlation: All times are based on UTC. Three clocks were manually synchronized prior to starting data collection; the clock in the video character generator that was used to annotate the video tape, in one of the video cassette recorders, and in the computer running the Hypack Max software. These clocks were set to UTC at the beginning of each evening's operations.
Resource Description: Digital video images that are geo-referenced to navigation files.
Tow-specific metadata were recorded in the data archive in the same location as the raw data, in a spreadsheet that was then referred to in creating metadata records of each island where data were collected during the cruise. Raw data files were exported as comma-delimited text files which were then imported into ArcGIS v8.3 and saved as shapefiles.