Looking back to plan for the future: Four decades of seagrass data provide a strong foundation for mapping marine habitats in the Gulf of Carpentaria and Torres Strait

The Gulf of Carpentaria and Torres Strait in north-eastern Australia support globally significant seagrass ecosystems that underpin fishing and cultural heritage of the region’s Traditional Owners and custodians. Reliable data on seagrass distribution and species composition is critical to understanding how these ecosystems are changing, while managing for resilience and mitigating risks. Spatial data on seagrass has been collected since the early 1980s, but the early data was poorly curated, some was not publicly available, and some already lost. To address this, we compiled, validated and synthesized historical seagrass spatial data (1983 - 2022) to create a publicly available database. We include a site layer of >48,000 geolocated data points with information on 13 seagrass species and other benthic conditions, and a polygon layer that includes >600 seagrass meadows. This resource provides an important baseline for a number of habitat mapping collaborations between First Nations communities, rangers and scientists that are underway in the Gulf of Carpentaria and Torres Strait and are described in this talk.

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Australian Marine Sciences Association Conference 2023

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