Diving into The Deep: The Unique Habitats of The Coral Sea Marine Park
Other Publication ResearchOnline@JCUAbstract
The Coral Sea is a critically important and significant ecosystem, which (like coral reefs globally) is increasingly threatened by changing environmental conditions, particularly ocean warming. To date, the majority of research and monitoring in the Coral Sea Marine Park (CSMP) has focused on shallow (<20m) reef habitats, with limited research into deep (>30m) reef habitats. As such our understanding of these deep habitats, the ecological communities they support, and the connectivity between them is lacking. Given these deep reef habitats likely occupy a much greater area than shallow reef habitats in the CSMP and have been suggested to provide a refuge from anthropogenic disturbance, there is a critical need to advance our understanding of these unique ecosystems. James Cook University was awarded funding through an Our Marine Parks Round 2 grant to explore and document the deep (>30m) reef habitats of the Coral Sea Marine Park. Specifically, the key objectives of this project were to: (i) use emerging technologies, such as remotely operated vehicles (ROV), to describe, for the first time, the composition and nature of coral and other benthic communities in deep reef habitats (30-100m) of the CSMP. (ii) describe the fish communities that occupy these deep reef habitats within the CSMP. (iii) use acoustic tracking to quantify movement, and thus connectivity, of large fishes and sharks among reefs within the CSMP, and between the CSMP and adjacent reefs of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP).
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162
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Parks Australia
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Townsville, QLD, Australia
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10.13140/RG.2.2.10516.68487/1