Abstract
Various measures are taken to improve the recent decline of fish catch. For effective improvement, it is necessary to evaluate the fishery ground environment and choose strategies tailored to the characteristic of fishery ground. Wide spatial distribution of seafloor habitat (i. e. seafloor covers such as rock, sand and seaweed) provides important basic information to assess habitats of commercially high-valued fishes. Satellite imagery has been utilized in recent years for mapping of wide-area seafloor habitat. However, it is difficult to remove the water column attenuation effect and set the classification classes in rocky seaweed bed area. The purpose of this study is to provide a new method for evaluation of fishery ground environment by examining the methods of seafloor habitat mapping based on satellite imagery and statistical analysis of fishery ground environment characteristic using the resulting map. These results suggested the availability of the evaluation method of fishery ground environment using the seafloor habitat map with red band and DI (Depth - invariant Index) based on satellite imagery and the statistical analysis for recovery of fishery ground.
