This record provides an overview of the scope and research output of NESP Marine Biodiversity Hub Project D8 - "Canyon mapping & biodiversity in Gascoyne Marine Park". For specific data outputs from this project, please see child records associated with this metadata.

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Very little is known about the deep waters of Australia’s marine parks. Recent NESP-supported surveys have targeted eastern abyssal depths and Tasmanian seamounts (NESP Project D4), but there have been no similar efforts in Western Australia. To counter this information deficit, we plan to actively map and sample two significant and biologically unexplored submarine canyons (Cape Range and Cloates Canyon) in the habitat protection and multiple use zones of the Gascoyne Marine Park. Standard operating procedures for marine sampling (multibeam, survey design) will be followed, with other sampling platforms (e-DNA, ROV) informing future SOPs (NESP Project D2).

Planned Outputs

• ROV image library (to be archived with the Australian Marine Imagery Collection at NCI)

• Derived bathymetric products (to be made available through Geoscience Australia website and linked to relevant portals, including the Marine Park Atlas and North-West Atlas)

• Taxonomic identifications and associated metadata (to be made available online through Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) web portal)

• Sanger genetic sequences and e-DNA sequences (to be lodged in databases such as NCBI’s Genbank, short read archive or DataDryad)

• Multibeam data will be processed into bathymetric grids at Geoscience Australia and made available via the AusSeabed portal