Misa et al : Establishing species-habitat associations for 4 eteline snappers 
295 
(Ralston et al., 1986; Haight et al., 1993a). More recent 
submersible surveys have supported those studies and 
have indicated that substrate type may be an impor- 
tant factor that influences distributions of adult bot- 
tomfishes (Kelley et ah, 2006). However, information on 
species-specific and age-specific habitat associations for 
bottomfishes remains limited. Although the preferred 
habitat of juvenile Opakapaka has been observed to be 
soft substrates with little to no relief (Moffitt and Par- 
rish, 1996; Parrish et al., 1997), variations in habitats 
between adults and juveniles, if any, have yet to be iden- 
tified for other species of deepwater bottomfishes. 
Information that can identify fish-habitat associa- 
tions is fundamental to fisheries science. In addition to 
the requirement to improve overfished stocks, the Mag- 
nuson-Stevens Act required federal fishery manage- 
ment plans to identify the essential fish habitat (EFH) 
for their managed species (Rosenberg et al., 2000). The 
EFH for the bottomfish fishery in Hawaii currently is 
designated as depths from 0 to 400 m without species- 
specific habitat requirements, despite the notion that 
habitat requirements probably differ between bottom- 
fish species and ontogenetic stage of these species. To 
guide management decisions on the protection and 
sustainable use of bottomfish resources in Hawaii, this 
EFH designation should be as complete and as specific 
as possible (Kelley et al., 2006). 
New data are needed to obtain a greater under- 
standing of the habitat associations of bottomfish 
species. Common shallow-water sampling techniques, 
such as diver transects, however, are not logistically 
feasible at depths below 100 m, and fishing surveys 
can be destructive to local populations. The need for 
a different survey method has led to the emergence of 
baited camera systems as cost-effective, nonextractive 
tools for the estimation of relative abundances of fish 
species at depths >100 m (Merritt et al., 2011; Moore 
et al., 2013). 
With the use of a baited stereo-video camera sys- 
tem, we aimed to improve our understanding of the 
habitat associations of 4 species of bottomfishes, within 
different size classes, in the MHI. Data specific to each 
species can be used to assess the amount of suitable 
habitat present in management areas and to relate 
catch per unit of effort (CPUE) to habitat type. Most 
important, through expansion of our understanding of 
the ecology of bottomfishes, more specific and refined 
EFH designations can be forged and ecosystem-based 
management strategies can be further developed. 
Materials and methods 
The Bottom Camera Bait Station (BotCam) developed 
by the Coral Reef Ecosystem Division of the NOAA Pa- 
cific Islands Fisheries Science Center is a remote, fully 
automated, baited system with stereo-video cameras; 
it was designed specifically for nonextractive, fishery- 
independent sampling of deepwater bottomfish species 
in their habitat and depth range (Merritt, 2005; Mer- 
ritt et al., 2011). The method for sampling fish popu- 
lations with a baited stereo-video camera system has 
been found to generate more consistent data than have 
comparable unbaited systems (Harvey et al., 2007), has 
the ability to detect mobile fish species (Harvey et al., 
2007; Watson et al., 2010), and has been determined to 
be effective in sampling bottomfishes in Hawaii (Ellis 
and DeMartini, 1995; Merritt et al., 2011). The BotCam 
is a means by which bottomfish abundance estimates 
can be made within actual bottomfish habitats and fish 
lengths can be accurately measured. 
Upon deployment, the BotCam sits about 3 m off the 
bottom of the seafloor, and, depending on the depth of 
deployment, amount of light, and water clarity, the field 
of view may expand or contract. Moore et al. (2013) es- 
timated that the visual area sampled by the BotCam 
was between 4 and 400 m 2 . The BotCam makes use 
of ambient light, which allows for an operating depth 
of up to 300 m and is operational on multiple bottom 
types, including steep slopes and high relief. In our 
study, the BotCam recorded 30 to 45 min of continu- 
ous video at each of the 6 deployment locations. Depth 
data were taken from a conductivity, temperature, and 
depth profiler attached to the system. The bait canis- 
ter attached to the BotCam was filled with -800 g of 
ground anchovy and squid, a mix that is similar to the 
bait used by bottomfish fishermen (Merritt et ah, 2011). 
Bottomfish habitat types in the MHI were charac- 
terized with multibeam bathymetry and backscatter 
data that originated from a variety of mapping sur- 
veys conducted with multibeam sonar systems in and 
around the MHI since the late 1990s. The U.S. Geo- 
logical Survey in collaboration with the Monterey Bay 
Aquarium Research Institute carried out the first sur- 
vey in the MHI in 1998 (U.S. Geological Survey Digital 
Data Series DDS-55, http://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-55/ 
index.html; MBARI Hawaii Multibeam Survey, http:// 
www.mbari.org/data/mapping/hawaii/index.htm) with 
a 30-kHz Simrad 3 EM 300 multibeam sonar system 
(Kongsberg Maritime AS, Kongsberg, Norway). Both the 
bathymetry and backscatter data from this survey were 
processed at a grid resolution of 20 m. The majority of 
the remaining data came from subsequent surveys con- 
ducted from 2002 to 2006 by researchers at the Hawaii 
Undersea Research Laboratory, University of Hawaii at 
Manoa, with a 95-kHz Simrad EM 1002 multibeam so- 
nar system. The editing and processing of raw data were 
carried out by the Hawaii Mapping Research Group of 
the University of Hawaii at Manoa using the SABER 
multibeam editing program (SAIC, Inc., McLean, VA) 
and other proprietary software. Bathymetry data were 
processed at a 20-m grid resolution, and backscatter 
data were processed at either a 10-m resolution or a 
20-m resolution, depending on the survey. The processed 
3 Mention of trade names or commercial companies is for iden- 
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