Inventorying fish assemblages within offshore marine reserves using baited videos and spatially-balanced sampling designs: An application to Australia's newly declared reserve network  

Authors / CoAuthors

Barrett, N. | Nichol, S. | Williams, A.

Abstract

This paper presents an application of a spatially-balanced survey design using baited videos in one reserve in Australia's recently declared network of reserves to: (i) identify the types of demersal fish communities present, (ii) quantify their relationship with environmental gradients and, (iii) describe their spatial distribution across the shelf of the reserve as an essential first step towards developing a monitoring program. Baited videos recorded a range of species from multiple trophic levels, including species of commercial and recreational interest. The majority of species, whilst found commonly along the southern or south-eastern coasts of Australia, were endemic to Australia, highlighting the global significance of this region. We identified six distinct fish assemblages on the shelf of the reserve. The distribution of these assemblages was related to environmental variables, the most important being depth and habitat type. Assemblages could be broadly categorised as either a combination of reef or sand associated and shallow or deep. Species richness was greater on habitats containing some reef and declined with increasing depth. The trophic breath of species in assemblages was also greater in shallow waters. We further discuss how our results can be used to inform future surveys and monitoring within this reserve as well as comment more generally on the utility of our approach for establishing inventories and baselines when little prior knowledge is available.

Product Type

nonGeographicDataset

eCat Id

79656

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Keywords

• External PublicationScientific Journal Paper

( Theme )

• marine biodiversity

( Theme )

• Continental Shelf

( Theme )

• seabed

( Theme )

• marine

( Theme )

• NERP

• TAS

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)

• Marine Geoscience

• Published_Internal

Publication Date

2014-05-26T00:00:00

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Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem    

Classification - unclassified

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence    

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Use - license

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Purpose

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notPlanned

Topic Category

biota

Series Information

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Unknown

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Extents

[-40.9, -40.35, 148.56, 148.91]

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Spatial Resolution

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