The purpose of this Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is to generally describe how to publish marine research image data such as photos and videos for scientific use. The goal of this document is to enable all scientists to provide FAIR and open image data using the infrastructure available to them. The scope of this SOP includes the steps necessary to make existing images (photos and videos) available to open scientific use after acquisition. This includes a) providing a core set of image metadata, b) saving files and metadata in a central storage location with backup and long-term archival, c) disclosure of image existence through public databases by publishing the image metadata, d) enabling access to image data for authorized stakeholders, e) enabling scientific interpretation of image, and f) FAIR and open publication of the image data itself. Completing the SOP will result in well-curated image data that adheres to open standards.