A comparison between Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) and Agassiz trawling methods is presented.
The behaviour of deep-sea fishes and invertebrates of the Northwestern Mediterranean submarine canyons was studied by ROV imaging.
The comparison between ROV sampling efficiency and Agassiz trawling highlighted that fish captures were 20 times higher with the ROV, with a lower efficiency for epibenthic invertebrates.
Ethological observations for fishes showed minor response to the ROV presence and new insights on decapods behaviour were obtained.
ROV surveying is an efficient technique to assess abundance and species composition in deep-sea waters for these motile species and questions trawl-based estimations.