South West Victoria Marine Habitat and Biodiversity Asset Identification and Applications of Seascape data in Victorian coastal waters

The effective management of our marine ecosystems requires the capability to identify, characterise and predict the distribution of benthic biological communities within the overall seascape architecture. Despite our dependence on oceans for a variety of economic pursuits (e.g. fishing, transport, and resource exploitation), we have little understanding of the marine benthic environment. Even simple and crucial information such as seafloor topography is limited. What we do know generally relates to shallow water regions (<10 metres) and is derived through optical remote sensing sources such as satellite imagery, aerial photography and traditional ground sampling (e.g. diver surveys). The fishing industry and the military have developed ingenious methods to overcome our inability to see through the water column by creating intricate acoustic systems. Over time, these systems have developed and changed, but observations have persistently lacked standardisation and, just as importantly, have not contributed to the shared knowledge of the wider community. Thus our knowledge of seafloor characteristics and the distribution of the benthic habitats that they contain are generally poor.