Long-term High Resolution Image Dataset of Antarctic Coastal Benthic Fauna

Antarctica is a remote place, the continent is covered by ice and its surrounding coastal areas arefrozen for the majority of the year. Due to its peculiarity the observation of the underwater organismsis particularly difficult, complicated by logistic factors. We present a long-term dataset consisting of755 images acquired by using a non-invasive, autonomous imaging device and encompassing both theAntarctic daylight and dark periods, including the corresponding transition phases. All images have thesame field of view showing the benthic fauna and part of the water column above, including fishes presentin the monitored period. All the images are manually annotated after a visual inspection performedby expert biologists. The extended monitoring period and the annotated images make the dataset avaluable benchmark suitable for studying the dynamics of the long-term Antarctic underwater fauna aswell as for developing and testing algorithms for automated image analysis focused on the recognitionand classification of the Antarctic organisms and the automated analysis of their long-term dynamics.