Occurrences of Cold Water Corals (CWC) in submarine canyons incising the continental margin of the Bay of Biscay. Cold Water Corals are here defined as all large size anthozoans belonging to the Order: Scleractinia, Antipatharia, Alcyonacea and Pennatulacea. The dataset is derived from image annotations of videos taken by the Remotely Operated Vehicle Victor 6000 and pictures taken by the towed camera SCAMPI during 8 oceanographic cruises (BOBECO ; BOBGEO ; BOBGEO2 ; EVHOE 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012). The depth of the dives ranges between 185 m and 2665 m. The context, methodology and results are fully described in van den Beld et al., 2017, Frontiers in Marine Science, 10.3389/fmars.2017.00118.

The data table has 16 columns:

Cruise – The name of the cruise during which the data were collected (see Metada for the DOIs of the cruises).

Dive – The ID of the dive during which the data were collected, absolute dive numbers are given for ROV Victor 6000 dives, relative dive numbers are given for SCAMPI dives.

Date – The date the data were collected, DD/MM/YYYY.

Time – The time the data were collected, HH:MM:SS.

Image.name – The ID of the image which was annotated.

Latitude – The latitude of either the ROV Victor 6000 or the ship towing the SCAMPI when the image was taken.

Longitude - The longitude of either the ROV Victor 6000 or the ship towing the SCAMPI when the image was taken.

Depth – The depth in meters of the geographical coordinates extracted from a 100-m resolution bathymetric digital elevation model of the Bay of Biscay.

Habitat – Habitat classification: The CWC habitat in which the CWC specimens have been observed. Habitats were defined according to Biotopes Level 1 of the classification scheme of European cold-water coral habitats (Davies et al., 2017, Deep-Sea Research II, 10.1016/j.dsr2.2017.04.014).

Class – Taxonomic classification: The Class which the specimen belong to.

Order - Taxonomic classification: The Order which the specimen belong to.

Family - Taxonomic classification: The Family which the specimen belong to, with exceptions: the suborder Alcyoniina has been used for undetermined families of ‘soft corals’, the unaccepted order Gorgonacea has been used for undetermined specimens of ‘gorgonians’ (i.e. suborders Calcaxonia and Holaxonia), Oculinidae and Caryophyllidae are mixed because in many cases it was not possible to distinguish Lophelia pertusa from Madrepora oculata (see Arnaud-Haond et al., 2017, Deep-Sea Research II, 10.1016/j.dsr2.2015.07.013).

Genus - Taxonomic classification: The Genus which the specimen belong to, with exception: the two genera Lophelia and Madrepora are mixed.

Species – An identifier for the morphotype or cluster of morphotypes, it can be a species name, a mix of species names (e.g. pertusa and oculata) or a number.

Final names – The association of the lowest taxonomic resolution achieved for the morphotype and the identifier for that morphotype.

OTU – A unique identifier for the morphotype from the species catalogue of megafauna in the North Atlantic available online at http://www.deepseacatalogue.fr/ [Howell, K.L., Davies, J.S., van den Beld I. Deep-sea species image catalogue. University of Plymouth, Ifremer, NOAA. http://www.deepseacatalogue.fr/ On-line version 3, 2017].

Nb – The number of individuals of a morphotype observed on the image. Note that for the reef-forming scleractinians Lophelia pertusa/Madrepora oculata and Solenosmilia variabilis, the value indicates presence only.