South-west Corner Marine Park Seabed Backscatter Survey

South-west Corner Marine Park offshore from Cape Naturaliste to Cape Leeuwin contains seabed backscatter data collected by Geoscience Australia in 2020 and 2021. The 4-meter resolution 32-bit GeoTIFF file covers 330 square kilometers of the continental shelf, providing baseline information for benthic habitats. The survey was a collaborative project funded by the National Environmental Science Program Marine Biodiversity Hub to support a 10-year marine park management plan.

Use Cases

• Mapping seafloor hardness and texture based on multibeam backscatter intensity.
• Establishing baseline benthic habitat maps for environmental monitoring within the marine park network.
• Integrating backscatter data with separate underwater imagery collections for holistic seafloor community analysis.
• Supporting the 10-year management plan (2018-2028) for the South-west Marine Park Network with foundational geophysical data.

Strengths

• Provides high-resolution (4 m) geospatial data for a defined 330 km² survey area.
• Data collection involved a specific, advanced multibeam sonar system (Kongsberg EM2040C) and a documented processing toolbox (CMST-GA MB Process).
• Survey was conducted as part of a formal, collaborative research project with multiple universities and government funding, indicating a structured methodology.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, file size, license, and author are consistently missing or listed as 'unknown'/'None' across all platform entries.
• The dataset is limited to a backscatter raster; associated bathymetry and underwater imagery are referenced but are separate deployments/files.
• The 'last updated' metadata field shows a future date (2026-04-20), which is a conflict and indicates potential platform metadata errors.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia, in collaboration with the University of Western Australia, University of Tasmania, and the Australian Centre for Field Robotics.

Collection Method

Data acquired using a Kongsberg EM2040C multibeam sonar system on the charter vessel Santosha and processed with the CMST-GA MB Process toolbox.

Time Range

Survey periods: 9–12 March 2020 and 27 January – 16 February 2021.

Freshness

Last updated metadata conflicts between 2026-04-20 and 2026-03-07; actual data is from 2020-2021 surveys.

Geography

South-west Corner Marine Park, offshore from Cape Naturaliste to Cape Leeuwin coast, Western Australia.