Fig 1. Overview map of the cold-seep site in Barkley Canyon (northeast Pacific, Canada).

(A) The cabled observatory network, The Barkley Canyon node, site of Wally I crawler deployment is highlighted by a black dot. (B) High-resolution bathymetric map showing the region of Barkley Canyon investigated in the current study. The black dots within the canyon axis represent the crawler node with the nearby mid-canyon POD4 platform and other deeper nodes. (C) Image demonstrating the crawler Field Of View (FOV) as used to acquire the faunal data. (D) Map showing position of navigation waypoints arranged around the hydrate outcrop, the crawler (near waypoint no. 12 in this schematic) and the route from waypoint no. 10 to 14, representing the survey transect analysis area. The cold seep community was distributed on a soft bottom zone with no apparent emerging rocks. At the end of the transect analysis area, a 5 m depth cliff (dashed grey line) separated our study area from a from the gas-hydrate mound (E) The crawler in operation.