Delineating fish-habitat associations for spatially based management: an example from the south-eastern Australian continental shelf

By Alan Williams, N. Bax. 2001

122 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A multi-scale, multi-gear survey identified the spatial structure and compositions of fish communities from a range of seabed types on the south-eastern Australian continental shelf (25 m to ∼200 m depth). Most communities are species-rich and contain many shared species. Multivariate analysis of distributions of 201 fishes showed communities to be correlated with depth, latitude and seabed type; correlation with hydrodynamic climate is suggested by patterns in morphology. Depth-related patterns occurred on soft-sediment and hard substrata; strong latitudinal (south-west/north-east) patterns identify the area as a faunal transition zone with a major faunal disjunction extending across the shelf. Community patterns were overlaid on distributions of substrata to produce a biophysical map. This mapping process is discussed in the context of spatial management: the ecologically significant scale at which to map habitat features and definition of management units for ecosystem-based management. A hierarchy of scaled ecological units is being developed for Australia's National Representative System of Marine Protected Areas (NRSMPA); given the scope of the NRSMPA initiative, surrogate measures of community structure will be required. Maps of substrata and topography, interpreted in the context of the broader depth and latitudinal community structure and as modified by hydrography, may provide one useful surrogate.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/94a14f296208589deb0428b3c34ac5467aa099e4

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Citations in the corpus

On the use of abiotic surrogates to describe marine benthic biodiversity (2010, background): “Numerous studies have provided evidence to show significant differences in the species composition between hard and soft substrata (Williams and Bax, 2001; Beaman and Harris, 2007), with hard substrates generally acting as habitat to a larger proportion of sessile suspension feeders and soft sedimen”
Comparison of morphological and DNA metabarcoding analyses of diets in exploited marine fishes (2015, background): “Until recently, research on the SESSF focused on single-species stock assessments (Williams & Bax 2001).”
Linking temperate demersal fish species to habitat: scales, patterns and future directions (2013, methodology): “Acoustic sensing devices are now widely recommended as a method to sample large areas of the benthic marine environment (Williams and Bax 2001).”
Habitat structural complexity metrics improve predictions of fish abundance and distribution (2018, background): “However, effective representation of biota is often constrained by a paucity of spatially-explicit data across the planning area (Williams and Bax 2001, Stevens and Connolly 2004).”
A hierarchical framework for classifying seabed biodiversity with application to planning and managing Australia’s marine biological resources (2010, background): “…continental shelves includes coral cays, glaciation structures, sand banks, deltaic bottoms, and rocky banks (Shepard, 1959; Bax and Williams, 2001; Williams and Bax, 2001; Lyne et al., 2006); and on continental slopes and the abyssal sea floor includes submarine canyons, seamounts, escarpments,…”
Differences in fish assemblages from different reef habitats at Hamelin Bay, south-western Australia (2003, background): “In south-eastern Australia, it has been suggested that maps of substrate and topography may provide a useful surrogate for fish assemblages (Williams and Bax 2001).”
Near real‐time spatial management based on habitat predictions for a longline bycatch species (2006, background): “2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 365 movements of the species to be exploited or protected (Perry & Smith 1994; Williams & Bax 2001).”