Valuing Australia’s new Gascoyne Marine Park

Research Projects | Updated 2 years ago

The Aquatic Zoology team is collaborating with CSIRO, Australia's national science agency and Parks Australia to undertake a comprehensive biodiversity survey of one of Australia’s newest marine parks. Established just four years ago, the Gascoyne Marine Park covers 81,766 km2 of marine habitats to the west of Cape Range Peninsula and extends protection from the Ningaloo Marine Parks all the way out to Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone, some 370 km offshore. Key habitats that the Park protects include a series of submarine canyons, such as the Cape Range and Point Cloates Canyons, as well as the southern edge of the Exmouth Plateau, where the seafloor slopes from ~1,000 m all the way down to >5,000 m on the Cuvier Abyssal Plain. The average depth of the Park is a whopping 3,327 m!

The team will be aboard the CSIRO research vessel (RV) Investigator for a month-long expedition setting sail mid-November and returning mid-December. The project will describe the habitats and quantify fish and seabed biodiversity of the Marine Park. The project is likely to discover new species of marine animals and ensure that conservation needs are more fully understood. The survey data, which will include new seafloor mapping deliverables, will identify and assist managers to maintain the park’s natural values into the future. The specimens collected will be of global significance and brought back to the Museum’s collections at the Harry Butler Research Centre where they will be cared for, identified and studied by researchers for decades to come.

This research is supported by a grant of sea time on RV Investigator from the CSIRO Marine National Facility.

For more information and to follow the expedition, check out these links:

https://mnf.csiro.au/en/Voyages/Voyage-Catalogue

https://atlas.parksaustralia.gov.au/amps/?featureId=AMP_NW_GAS