The project will design, implement and test ways to integrate new and existing survey and monitoring methods at three locations: the shelf of the Flinders CMR in the Southeast IMCRA transition bioregion, the coral/kelp KEF to the east of the Houtman-Abrolhos islands and the east-coast shelf KEF adjacent to the Solitary Islands marine reserve.  The project will access existing CMR (and other MPA) monitoring datasets from the partners for the Southeast Marine Bioregion (i.e. Freycinet, Huon, Tasman Fracture and Zeehan CMRs and Maria Island MPA) and thereby attempt to extend the spatial coverage of survey and monitoring methods to include all depths and habitat-types contained in the Commonwealth Southeast Marine Reserve Network (excepting the abyssal plain)

The project will use these new and existing datasets to examine: a) economic and logistical issues, such as the costs and benefits (developed by Theme 2 project 1) of the survey methods, and the use of regular versus event-initiated surveys; and, b) scientific and statistical survey design issues, such as the choice of biodiversity metric and seasonal variation in species group indicators of ecological health, and their impact on the variance and bias of survey data and hence our ability to reliably detect change with these data.

Seabed habitats of Flinders Commonwealth Marine Reserve - Northeast Tasmania