Geomorphology and Habitats of Shelf Reefs in Southeast Tasmania

Geoscience Australia and the University of Tasmania produced a flythrough movie visualizing the bathymetry of the southeast Tasmanian shelf. The video highlights rock reef habitats derived from multibeam sonar data collected in 2008 and 2009 at 3-4 meter resolution. This work was part of the Marine Biodiversity Research Hub funded by the Commonwealth Environment Research Facilities programme.

Use Cases

• Visualizing underwater topography based on multibeam sonar bathymetry.
• Studying hard substrate habitats for kelp and sponge communities based on reef descriptions.
• Comparing reef geomorphology based on described low-relief and high-relief features.

Strengths

• Bathymetric data is derived from multibeam sonar collected with a 300 kHz Simrad EM3002 system.
• Data was gridded at a high resolution of 3 to 4 meters.
• Specific reef features are described, including low relief (<5 m) and high relief (50-90 m) structures.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to data_gov_au.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia and University of Tasmania (Institute for Marine & Antarctic Studies)

Collection Method

Multibeam sonar survey from RV Challenger.

Time Range

2008, 2009

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-14 03:53:58.706997; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Southeast Tasmanian shelf, including Freycinet Peninsula, Tasman Peninsula, Hippolyte Rocks, and The Friars south of Bruny Island.