This flythrough highlights canyon environments within the Gascoyne Marine Park offshore northwestern Australia. The Cape Range Canyon is a relatively narrow, linear canyon that initiates on the continental slope, but is connected to the shelf via a narrow channel. The walls of the canyon are steep and reveal a history of slumping and retrogressive failure, that have broadened the canyon over time. The floor contains a series of deep plunge pools, indicative of the action of sediment-laden turbidity currents in further eroding this canyon. Epibenthos within the canyons was relatively sparse and likely regulated by disturbance associated with sedimentation in the canyons. Rock overhangs often supported the highest densities of benthic suspension feeders, including glass sponges, octocorals, and ascidians. Bathymetry data and seafloor imagery for this flythrough was collected by the Schmidt Ocean Institute during survey FK200308. Funding was provided by Schmidt Ocean Institute, Geoscience Australia, the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program (NESP) Marine Biodiversity Hub, the Director of National Parks, and the Foundation for the WA Museum through a Woodside Marine Biodiversity Grant.

Seven case study locations (Keep, Daly, Roper, McArthur, Flinders, and Gilbert River estuaries, and Darwin Harbour) were used to test the utility of the Australian Landsat data archive in the Digital Earth Australia analysis platform for characterising and monitoring the condition and change in coastal habitats. A suite of analyses was undertaken including: assessing the extent of different coastal habitats, detecting coastal change including change in mangrove communities, and the distribution of intertidal areas. The work was successful in: (a) generating baseline information for the case study areas; and, (b) developing valuable monitoring tools for future use.

Between 2009-2012, Geoscience Australia conducted three surveys to Joseph Bonaparte Gulf and the Timor Sea on the R.V. Solander, in collaboration with the Australian Institute of Science and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. The study areas overlapped the Oceanic Shoals Commonwealth Marine Reserve and the carbonate banks and terraces within it. The surveys were conducted as part of the Australian Government's Energy Security Program (2007-2011) and the National Environment Research Program (2011-2015). On the surveys, a benthic sled was deployed to collect biological samples from the seafloor. Samples were sorted onboard according to phylum, photographed and then sent to taxonomists for species-level identifications. This catalogue includes all onboard photographs taken from identified samples. Sponges were the only group of which all samples were identified, but they include high proportions of unnamed or undescribed species. The catalogue also includes taxonomic identification sheets so that users can cross-reference the species names and images with location and depth.

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. -------------------- 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

This record describes Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) imagery collected from within the Gascoyne Marine Park offshore northwestern Australia. The ROV SuBastian was used to conduct imagery transects on 20 dives across 16 stations, including 12 quantitative transects within the Cape Range Canyon. No quantitative transects were conducted in the Cloates Canyon due to delays caused by poor weather. SuBastian is equipped with a Sulis Subsea Z70 deep sea science camera, with 4K UHD 2160p optics and sensors for temperature, depth, conductivity and oxygen. The quantitative transects were run for 500 m upslope, ideally at a speed of 0.3 knots and an altitude of 2 m above the seafloor or rock walls. Still images were acquired every 5 seconds, with additional frames added manually as required. Still images from most transects were primarily annotated onboard using the RV Falkor’s private instance of SQUIDLE+, with some post-survey annotation conducted using the public instance of Squidle+ (http://squidle.org/).