Tender: External Quality Assurance of DY200 Drop Camera Seabed Imagery for The Canyons MCZ

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JNCC is seeking a contractor to undertake external quality assurance (eQA) analysis of seabed imagery collected on the RSS Discovery (DY200) survey in September 2025 to monitor The Canyons MCZ. The work covers analysis of 5 hours of drop-camera video, 300 drop-camera stills and 100 AUV images using BIIGLE with the supplied label trees and Epibiota Quality Assurance proforma spreadsheets; deliverables include substrate and taxonomic image reference collections for each habitat/biotope identified, a final analysis report (maximum 10,000 words, submitted electronically as a Microsoft Word document) detailing methodology, results and all QA work and remedial actions, and a subset of annotated stills suitable as AI training data. The contractor must adhere to NMBAQC Epibiota interpretation guidelines (Turner et al., 2016) and check with JNCC for any updated guidelines, use the Marine Habitat Classification of Britain and Ireland (v 22.04) to segment video into continuous habitat segments of at least 5 m, assign image quality using NMBAQC and JNCC label trees (with further analysis dependent on quality scores), annotate biotopes up to level 6, record litter and other anthropogenic impacts, ensure media naming is reconcilable with original files, and may only use alternative annotation software with agreement from the project officer; access to the BIIGLE project and proforma spreadsheets will be provided.