Australia has established a network of 58 marine parks within Commonwealth waters covering a total of 3.3 million square kilometres, or 40 per cent of our exclusive economic zone (excluding Australian Antarctic Territory). These parks span a range of settings, from near coastal and shelf habitats to abyssal plains. Parks Australia manages the park network through management plans that came into effect for all parks on 1 July 2018. Geoscience Australia is contributing to their management by collating and interpreting existing environmental data, and through the collection of new marine data. “Eco-narrative” documents are being developed for those parks, where sufficient information is available, delivering collations and interpretations of seafloor geomorphology, oceanography and ecology. Many of these interpretations rely on bathymetric grids and their derived products, including those in this data release. Geoscience Australia has developed a new marine seafloor classification scheme, which uses the two-part seafloor mapping morphology approach of Dove et al (2016). This new scheme is semi-hierarchical and the first step divides the slope of the seafloor into three Morphological Surface categories (Plain, <2°; Slope, 2-10°; Escarpment, >10°). This classification was applied to the portion of the Beaman and Spinnocia (2018) 30 m grid within the marine park. Beaman, R.J. and Spinoccia, M. (2018). High-resolution depth model for Northern Australia - 30 m. Geoscience Australia. Dove, D., Bradwell, T., Carter, G., Cotterill, C., Gafeira, J., Green, S., Krabbendam, M., Mellet, C., Stevenson, A., Stewart, H., Westhead, K., Scott, G., Guinan, J., Judge, M. Monteys, X., Elvenes, S., Baeten, N., Dolan, M., Thorsnes, T., Bjarnadóttir, L., Ottesen, D. (2016). Seabed geomorphology: a twopart classification system. British Geological Survey, Open Report OR/16/001. 13 pages. This research is supported by the National Environmental Science Program (NESP) Marine Biodiversity Hub through Project D1.

IMAS/CSIRO undertook a multibeam mapping campaign in eastern and Southern Tasmania to map shelf waters of the Freycinet, Huon and Tasman Fracture Marine Parks and several reference areas for the Tasman Fracture Park, including waters around Pedra Brancha and South-west Cape. The dataset includes a post-processed transit along the mid-shelf i=of Western Tasmania. The dataset includes raw mutibeam outputs and post-processed data, including Caris Files, xyz data and geotiffs. A data report for this has been produced by CSIRO. The study was intended to increase knowledge of the distribution of habitats within the SE Australian Australian Marine Park network, and at nearby reference areas with similar habitat. This information is required to underpin subsequent biological monitoring of key habitats within the AMP network, and to contrast the observations within parks with nearby fished locations to determine the extent that changes in biological communities are driven by natural vs anthropogenic pressures.

This record provides an overview of the scope and research output of NESP Marine Biodiversity Hub Project D6 - "Socioeconomic benchmarks". For specific data outputs from this project, please see child records associated with this metadata. -------------------- Social and economic values are key drivers for marine science and marine policy but are too rarely integrated with marine biodiversity monitoring programs. In close consultation with Parks Australia (PA) we will review existing metrics used to survey social and economic values associated with marine parks. This review will include consulting with national and international expertise and actively consulting with State and other Commonwealth agencies, some of whom are currently conducting reviews or have existing frameworks for surveying social and economic values (e.g Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA), NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI)). In collaboration with national partners and PA we will organise a national methods workshops to discuss and refine metrics and methods to quantify social and economic benchmarks for State and Australian Marine Parks (AMPs) and produce Standard Operating Procedure’s (SOP) relevant to AMPs taking into consideration the Department of the Environment and Energy’s (DoEE’s) environmental accounting processes and PA’s Monitoring, Evaluation, Reporting and Improvement (MERI) framework. Planned Outputs • SOP for measuring social and economic metrics for AMPs • Final report on essential (key) AMP social and economic metrics • Summaries of research and surveys made available through the Marine Parks Science Atlas

Cyclone data was used to develop a spatial model using the intensity and to determine whether Sea Surface Temperature or Tropical Cyclone Heat Potential contributes to the North Indian Ocean cyclone intensity and, if so, how?

Phytoplankton productivity in the polar Southern Ocean (SO) plays an important role in the transfer of carbon from the atmosphere to the ocean’s interior, a process called the biological carbon pump, which helps regulate global climate. SO productivity in turn is limited by low iron, light, and temperature, which restrict the ef- ficiency of the carbon pump. Iron and light can colimit productivity due to the high iron content of the photosynthetic photosystems and the need for increased photosystems for low-light acclimation in many phytoplankton. Here we show that SO phytoplankton have evolved critical adaptations to enhance photosynthetic rates under the joint constraints of low iron, light, and temperature. Under growth-limiting iron and light levels, three SO species had up to sixfold higher photosynthetic rates per photosystem II and similar or higher rates per mol of photosynthetic iron than tem- perate species, despite their lower growth temperature (3 vs. 18 °C) and light intensity (30 vs. 40 μmol quanta·m2·s−1), which should have decreased photosynthetic rates. These unexpectedly high rates in the SO species are partly explained by their unusually large photosynthetic antennae, which are among the largest ever recorded in marine phytoplankton. Large antennae are disadvan- tageous at low light intensities because they increase excitation energy loss as heat, but this loss may be mitigated by the low SO temperatures. Such adaptations point to higher SO production rates than environmental conditions should otherwise permit, with implications for regional ecology and biogeochemistry.

The AUStralian Tidal Energy (AUSTEn) project was a three year project (2018 - 2020) funded by the Australian Renewable Energy National Agency (agreement number G00902) led by the Australian Maritime College (University of Tasmania), in partnership with CSIRO and University of Queensland. The project had a strong industry support (Atlantis Resources Limited, MAKO Tidal Turbines Ltd, Spiral Energy Corporation Ltd). The aim of the project was to assess the technical and economic feasibility of tidal energy in Australia, based on the best understanding of resource achievable. For further information and output of the project, please visit the AUSTEn project website www.austen.org.au.

Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) are a keystone species in the Southern Ocean, but little is known about how they will respond to climate change. Ocean acidification, caused by sequestration of carbon dioxide into ocean surface waters (pCO2), is known to alter the lipid biochemistry of some organisms. This can have cascading effects up the food chain. In a year-long laboratory experiment adult krill were exposed to ambient seawater pCO2 levels (400 μatm), elevated pCO2 levels that mimicked near-future ocean acidification (1000, 1500 and 2000 μatm) and an extreme pCO2 level (4000 μatm). The laboratory light regime mimicked the seasonal Southern Ocean photoperiod and krill received a constant food supply. Total lipid mass (mg g -1 DM) of adult krill was unaffected by near-future levels of seawater pCO2. Fatty acid composition (%) and fatty acid ratios associated with immune responses and cell membrane fluidity were also unaffected by near-future pCO2, apart from an increase in 18:3n-3/18:2n-6 ratios in krill in 1500 μatm pCO2 in winter and spring. Extreme pCO2 had no effect on krill lipid biochemistry during summer. During winter and spring, krill in extreme pCO2 had elevated levels of omega-6 fatty acids (up to 1.2% increase in 18:2n-6, up to 0.8% increase in 20:4n-6 and lower 18:3n-3/18:2n-6 and 20:5n-3/20:4n-6 ratios), and showed evidence of increased membrane fluidity (up to three-fold increase in phospholipid/sterol ratios). These results indicate that the lipid biochemistry of adult krill is robust to near-future ocean acidification.

The AUStralian Tidal Energy (AUSTEn) project was a three year project (2018 - 2020) funded by the Australian Renewable Energy National Agency (agreement number G00902) led by the Australian Maritime College (University of Tasmania), in partnership with CSIRO and University of Queensland. The project had a strong industry support (Atlantis Resources Limited, MAKO Tidal Turbines Ltd, Spiral Energy Corporation Ltd). The aim of the project was to assess the technical and economic feasibility of tidal energy in Australia, based on the best understanding of resource achievable. For further information and output of the project, please visit the AUSTEn project website www.austen.org.au.

Rock samples were dredged from seamounts in the southern Tasman Sea on the RV Investigator, voyage IN2018_V08