Multi-scale Fish-habitat Associations and the Use of Habitat Surrogates to Predict the Organisation and Abundance of Deep-water Fish Assemblages

Deep-water demersal fishes are an important component of continental shelf and slope ecosystems and play an important role in the economies of many countries. Strong and predictable relationships of fishes with seabed habitats, in conjunction with rapid advances in acoustic seabed mapping capabilities, indicate there is great potential for using habitats as proxies or ‘surrogates’ to predict species distribution and abundance patterns at broad regional scales. However, few studies have evaluated this potential in complex seabed environments. In this study, we examined the spatial distributions, assemblage composition, and benthic habitat associations of deep-water demersal fish species over three spatial scales across Cordell Bank, a deep-water bank in central California. Demersal fishes were counted and habitats quantified from 60 strip-transects allocated over the extent of the bank using in situ observer and video-recorded data from the two-person Delta submersible. Both abundance and distribution of demersal fish species on Cordell Bank were strongly correlated with spatial location and habitat composition on the bank. Habitat structure was heterogeneous at several spatial scales. At broad scales, the rocky bank itself contained the highest diversity of both habitats and fishes. At intermediate scales, transition zones (10-100s of m wide) between the bank and continental slope and shelf sediments supported a diverse and characteristic suite of fish species. Habitats were also heterogeneous at finer-scales (1-10s of m) within these broad-scale zones, and fish responses to these habitat characteristics were taxon-specific, and often contingent on the spatial configuration of fine scale habitats within the broader-scale landscape. The results of this study indicate that for many species it is not sufficient to just know the fine-scale habitat association to predict fish assemblages.

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Identification info

Date (Publication)
2009-01-01T00:00:00
Citation identifier
Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/69974

Citation identifier
Digital Object Identifier/http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jembe.2009.07.033

Cited responsible party
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Author

Anderson, T.J.

 1
Author

Syms, C.

 2
Author

Roberts, D.A.

 3
Author

Howard, D.F.

 4
Point of contact
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Custodian

EGD
Owner

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Custodian

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

 Voice
Topic category
  • Geoscientific information

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N
S
E
W


Maintenance and update frequency
Unknown
Keywords

  • External Publication

  • Scientific Journal Paper

Theme

  • habitat

Theme

  • marine survey

Theme

  • marine

Keywords

  • US

  • CA

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)

  • Earth Sciences

Keywords

  • Published_External

Resource constraints

Title

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence

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CC-BY

Edition

4.0

Website

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

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License

Resource constraints

Title

Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem

Edition date
2018-11-01T00:00:00
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https://www.protectivesecurity.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx

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Unclassified
Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8

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Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

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OnLine resource

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Link to Publication

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Unknown

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Non geographic dataset
Other

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Description

Source data not available.

Metadata constraints

Title

Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem

Edition date
2018-11-01T00:00:00
Website

https://www.protectivesecurity.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx

Classification
Unclassified

Metadata

Metadata identifier
urn:uuid/a05f7892-ef41-7506-e044-00144fdd4fa6

Title

GeoNetwork UUID

Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8
Contact
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Point of contact

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

 Voice

Type of resource

Resource scope
Non geographic dataset
Name

nonGeographicDataset

Alternative metadata reference

Title

Geoscience Australia - short identifier for metadata record with

uuid

Citation identifier
eCatId/69974

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/a05f7892-ef41-7506-e044-00144fdd4fa6

Date info (Revision)
2018-04-22T08:45:53
Date info (Creation)
2009-12-17T00:00:00

Metadata standard

Title

AU/NZS ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115-3

Title

Geoscience Australia Community Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-1:2014

Edition

Version 2.0, September 2018

Citation identifier
https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/122551

 
 

Spatial extent

N
S
E
W


Keywords

habitat marine marine survey

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