Jervis Bay Soft-Sediment Habitat Maps and Co-Located Physical-Biological Data

A series of field surveys in Jervis Bay, New South Wales, collected co-located physical and biological data to research physical surrogates for benthic biodiversity. The outputs include high-resolution multibeam acoustic datasets, underwater video footage for habitat characterization, and broad-scale sediment and biotic seabed samples. The work was undertaken by Geoscience Australia staff as part of the CERF Marine Biodiversity Hub's Surrogates Program, with a progress report presented in October 2008.

Use Cases

• Modeling benthic biodiversity patterns based on high-resolution multibeam acoustic data.
• Characterizing benthic habitat types based on underwater video footage and real-time annotations.
• Analyzing covariance between sediment geochemistry and infauna biotic samples from co-located seabed samples.
• Evaluating seabed current data from an acoustic doppler current profiler for habitat modeling.

Strengths

• Includes high-resolution multibeam acoustic datasets for priority coastal areas.
• Provides co-located sediment and biotic seabed samples from multiple soft-sediment habitat types.
• Contains real-time habitat characterizations from bi-directional towed video transects.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last updated 2026-03-25 16:22:35.748250; freshness should be verified.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Field surveys including multibeam acoustic mapping, towed video transects, and seabed sampling.

Time Range

Field work and reporting circa 2008.

Freshness

Last updated date is 2026-03 25, but primary data collection appears to be from 2008.

Geography

Jervis Bay, New South Wales, Australia, including open coast, national park, and bay entrance areas.