Abstract
The northwest continental shelf of Australia supports a series of emergent reefs toward the western edge and a chain of submerged shoals extending eastward along the Sahul Shelf. Hard corals and calcareous algae are major components of the benthos in the upper mesophotic regions (30–60 m) on both reefs and shoals. These habitats transition to heterotrophic-dominated communities at around 60 m depth in clear water at shelf-edge locations. While mixed hard coral communities of moderate diversity are commonly encountered, characteristic upper mesophotic coral habitats include dense areas of foliaceous species from the families Agaricidae and Acroporidae in depths of 40–60 m. Extensive fields of fungiid corals can be found occupying unconsolidated substrates at similar depths on both reefs and shoals. The alternate ecological stages of otherwise geomorphically similar shoals provide evidence of shoal scale temporal stochasticity in recruitment and disturbance events. Green calcareous algae of the genus Halimeda can be abundant and are a major sediment producer in shoal bioherms. Taxonomic studies have been focused on the shallow reefs of the region, with collection of voucher specimens from mesophotic depths lacking from the majority of reef and shoal locations.
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Model accuracy was evaluated using one third of the towed video data as blind validation and area under the curve (AUC) analysis, whereby the larger the AUC, the more robust the model for prediction. Models with AUC > 0.8 have high predictive power, values between 0.7 and 0.8 are acceptable, and models with AUC of < 0.5 have no power of discrimination (Fawcett 2006). As presented in Fig. 19.5, the AUC values for all benthic groups exceeded 0.8 for each benthic group (range 0.82–0.94), indicating the distributions of habitats shown is highly probable.
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Acknowledgments
Seabed biodiversity surveys of reefs and shoals in this region require ship-based expeditions. We wish to thank the masters and crews of the research vessels R/V Solander, R/V Cape Ferguson, and R/V Falkor for the many courtesies and unflagging support extended to us over multiple voyages. Marcus Stowar, Jamie Colquhoun, Mary Wakeford, and Mark Case receive our sincere thanks for extraordinary efforts with field operations, image analysis, and data management. Ongoing surveys at Scott Reef have been supported by Woodside Energy Limited, operator of permit WA33P on behalf of the Browse joint venture partners. The most recent ROV assessment of the mesophotic lagoon at Scott Reef was undertaken with support from the Schmidt Ocean Institute. We acknowledge PTTEP Australasia Ltd.’s support of surveys at Heywood Shoal, Conoco Phillips Ltd. at Evans Shoal, and a joint voyage under the auspices of the Arafura and Timor Seas Ecosystem Action (ATSEA) program to revisit Fungid Shoal.
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Heyward, A., Radford, B. (2019). Northwest Australia. In: Loya, Y., Puglise, K., Bridge, T. (eds) Mesophotic Coral Ecosystems. Coral Reefs of the World, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92735-0_19
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