Seafloor habitat definition for spatial management in fisheries: A case study on the continental shelf of southeast Australia

The importance of habitat to fisheries production on Australia's southeast continental shelf is part of a five-year study of ecosystem functioning and its implications for a sustainable fishery. Benthic habitats from 40 m to ∼200 m were studied, based on identification of suitable sites from local fishers' information. Results presented here concentrate on data from a single mesohabitat at 40–60 m depth collected over two days. Macrohabitats within this mesohabitat were discriminated as soft, hard and rough from visual inspection of acoustic echograms. Subsequent analysis of the return echoes using roughness and hardness indices did not significantly improve real-time visual discriminations. Macrohabitats were sampled with an underwater video camera, sediment sampler, benthic sled, demersal trawl, gillnets and fish traps to relate the acoustic classifications to biological habitats. There were distinct differences in the benthic and fish communities between macrohabitats discriminated by acoustics. We concluded that discrimination of habitats from visual inspection of echograms, plus limited verification with physical sampling, could provide sufficient information for spatial management. However, successful management of individual species, the fish community and the ecosystem requires an understanding of the association of fishes with habitat at the macrohabitat and mesohabitat level, and its variability through time.