parks victoria technical series marine natural values study vol 2 ...

Parks Victoria Technical Series No. 79
Flinders and Twofold Shelf Bioregions Marine Natural Values Study
Figure 21. Sponge garden in Point Hicks Marine National Park. Photo by Mark Norman Museum of
Victoria.
2.3.3 MARINE ECOLOGICAL COMMUNITIES
General
Since the first natural values report by Plummer et al. (2003) Parks Victoria has invested in
extensive monitoring and mapping surveys in Point Hicks MNP. There has been broadscale
habitat mapping, with the intertidal and shallow subtidal areas mapped from aerial and
satellite imagery (Ball and Blake 2007) and the deep subtidal areas with hydroacoustic
surveys (Holmes et al. 2007a). There have been four SRMP surveys of the shallow subtidal
reef biota of Cape Howe which are summarised by Williams et al. (2007) and Edmunds et al.
(2010b). Additional funding has allowed samples from deep subtidal soft sediment surveyed
in the MNP in 1998 to be processed and identified (Heislers and Parry 2007). There have
still been no surveys of sandy beaches, the biota of intertidal reefs or the pelagic habitats.
Important locations for some birds and mammals are shown in Figure 20. Surveys in the
MNP found red and brown algae dominate the diversity of macrophytes, gastropods and
echinoderms the invertebrates and fish and birds the vertebrates in Point Hicks MNP (Table
15, Appendix 1).
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