@article {Letnes150060, author = {Paul Anton Letnes and Ingrid Myrnes Hansen and Lars Martin Sandvik Aas and Ingvar Eide and Ragnhild Pettersen and Luca Tassara and Justine Receveur and Stephane le Floch and Julien Guyomarch and Lionel Camus and Jenny Bytingsvik}, title = {Underwater hyperspectral classification of deep sea corals exposed to 2-methylnaphthalene}, elocation-id = {150060}, year = {2018}, doi = {10.1101/150060}, publisher = {Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory}, abstract = {Coral reefs around the world are under threat due to anthropogenic impacts on the environment. It is therefore important to develop methods to monitor the status of the reefs and detect changes in the health condition of the corals at an early stage before severe damage occur. In this work, we evaluate underwater hyperspectral imaging as a method to detect changes in health status of both orange and white color morphs of the coral species Lophelia pertusa.Differing health status was achieved by exposing 66 coral samples to the toxic compound 2-methylnaphthalene in concentrations of 0 mg L-1 to 3.5 mg L-1. A machine learning model was utilized to classify corals according to lethal concentration (LC) levels LC5 (5 \% mortality) and LC25 (25 \% mortality), solely based on their reflectance spectra. All coral samples were classified to correct concentration group. This is a first step towards developing a remote sensing technique able to assess environmental impact on deep-water coral habitats over larger areas.}, URL = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/04/16/150060}, eprint = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/04/16/150060.full.pdf}, journal = {bioRxiv} }