DORIS: DORset Integrated Seabed Study

A major award from Viridor Credits (Landfill Tax Communities Fund) has created the opportunity to "peel back the sea" off Dorset, revealing, for the first time, the fascinating physical and biological complexity of the seabed in exquisite detail. 

This exciting project, in which Dorset Wildlife Trust is collaborating with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), the Channel Coastal Observatory (CCO) and the National Oceanographic Centre, Southampton (NOCS), will map the extent and distribution of natural seabed features, allowing a much better understanding of the sensitivity of seabed communities to the many human activities.

There are two main phases:

Phase 1 - a full cover, high resolution multibeam sonar survey, began in summer 2008.  This reveals the shape and, to some extent, the character, of the seabed in incredible detail, down to less than 1m resolution.  This is enough to be able to recognise many seabed features - sand waves and ribbons, rocky ledges etc and will be used to plan the next phase.

Phase 2 - the "ground-truthing", will take place in 2009.  The aim here is to match what is really on the seabed (determined by divers, grab samples or remote cameras) with what can be inferred from the remote sensing data from phase 1.  This will then allow a reliable prediction of the extent and distribution of seabed habitats.

Who is involved?

Gathering information about the seabed is expensive.  Most of what we currently know comes from a multitude of previous surveys, each carried out for a specific reason, to widely differing standards.  It was not unusual for the same area of seabed to be surveyed several times over, either because those carrying out the surveys were unaware of earlier work, or existing information wasn't suitable or of a high enough standard. 

DORIS has brought together a number of organisations interested in gathering seabed data in Dorset, allowing them to pool resources to undertake a survey to strict standards, suitable for all contributing parties, putting the principle of "collect once, use many times" at the heart of the project

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency needs accurate information to update navigational charts.  The Channel Coastal Observatory needs detailed information from the nearshore area to inform future coastal defence decisions.  Dorset Wildlife Trust can use the same survey data to map the distribution of seabed habitats, highlighting the more sensitive and more important areas.

The data will be fed into Finding Sanctuary - a regional project to identify a network of Marine Conservation Zones in the southwest.  The Dorset Coast Forum will use the same data to help inform future planning decisions in a busy area of sea through the C-SCoPE project

Map of DORIS study area - image courtesy of Google Earth

DORIS is funded by a Landfill Tax Communities Fund award from Viridor Credits and by contributions from Maritime and Coastguard Agency, Channel Coastal Observatory and Dorset Strategic Partnership

Multibeam Survey Images

Click on "Notes" for further information