Seabed Biodiversity Richness on the Continental Shelf of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area: Fish communities using Baited Remote Underwater Video (BRUVS), 2003 - 2006 (MTSRF 1.1.5, AIMS, Source: AIMS)

This very large study is part of the Seabed biodiversity study, published in Pitcher et al. (2007). Its purpose was to quantify patterns in seabed biodiversity and inter-reefal environmental conditions throughout the GBR.

The study had three aims: (1) Assessment of seabed biodiversity on the continental shelf of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, and assessment of the use of biophysical data as environmental correlates of biodiversity and benthic communities; (2) Mapping bycatch and seabed benthos assemblages in the GBR Region for environmental risk assessment and sustainable management of the Queensland East Coast Trawl Fishery, and (3) Assessment of the performance of acoustic remote sensing for seabed mapping and as a surrogate for biodiversity on the continental shelf of the GBR.

These data are based on fish counts of 1150 baited remote underwater video system (BRUVS) sequences.

As part of the Reef Atlas project (now the eAtlas) the fish observations were interpolated over the whole GBR by Glenn De'ath using Generalized Additive Models with a Quasibinomial fit. This produced a gridded version of the dataset and is available as a KML.

Data unit:

Richness: number of species per BRUVS or per reef?