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
2.4.3 MARINE ECOLOGICAL COMMUNITIES
General
Since the first natural values report by Plummer et al. (2003) there have been extensive
monitoring and mapping surveys conducted in Cape Howe MNP. There has been extensive
broadscale habitat mapping, with the intertidal areas mapped from aerial and satellite
imagery (Ball and Blake 2007) and the deep subtidal areas mapped with hydroacoustic
surveys (Holmes et al. 2007b). Both surveys were ground truthed with underwater video
imagery. 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). In
addition to the SRMP fish surveys, benthic deep water (> 10 m) fish have been surveyed
with baited video in 2006 (Moore et al. 2008; Moore et al. 2009). A total of 74 species of fish
belonging to 39 families were sampled over subtidal sediments and reef (Moore et al. 2008).
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 been no
surveys of sandy beaches, intertidal reef or the pelagic habitats. Important locations for
some birds and mammals are shown in Figure 33. Surveys in the MNP found that red algae
dominate the diversity of macrophytes, gastropods, decapod crustaceans and echinoderms
the invertebrates and fish and birds the vertebrates in Cape Howe MNP (Table 22, Appendix
1).
Figure 34. A canopy of the kelp Ecklonia radiata with an understorey of small algae on a reef in Cape
Howe Marine National Park.
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