Australia has one of the world’s largest marine estates that includes many vulnerable habitats and a high biodiversity, with many endemic species crossing a wide latitudinal range. The marine estate is used by a variety of industries including fishing, oil & gas, and shipping, in addition to traditional, cultural, scientific and recreational uses. The Commonwealth government manages the Australian Marine Parks (AMPs), the largest network of marine protected areas (MPAs) in the world (Cochrane 2016). These marine parks complement existing MPA networks in State and Territory waters.
Monitoring the impacts of these uses on the marine environment is a massive shared responsibility that can only be achieved by making the best use of all the information that is collected. Australia has a number of significant long-term marine monitoring and observing programs (Hedge et al. 2021, see Table 1 for ecological and biological programs), as well as a national ocean data network (aodn.org.au). Without some common and agreed standards, information collected may not be comparable with other areas or sectors. This may reduce its value to regional and national management, while the individual project or survey may lose the opportunity to interpret results in a regional or national context.
Australia is uniquely placed to develop standardised national approaches to monitor the marine environment. This objective integrates with one of the high-level recommendations identified by the National Marine Science Plan (2015-25): Recommendation 2 is to ‘establish and support a national marine baselines and long-term monitoring program, to develop a comprehensive assessment of our estate, and to help manage Commonwealth and state marine reserves” (Hedge et al. 2021). Standardised national approaches will also contribute to the effective coordination across the marine science and observing community (including industry and citizen scientists). Such coordination has been recognised as integral to a governance system for sustained and effective monitoring in Australia’s marine environment (Hayes et al. 2015) and yet was identified as highly variable and frequently inadequate in the 2016 State of the Environment Report (Evans et al. 2017). A 2019-20 audit of marine baselines and monitoring programs identified 371 programs (Hedge et al. 2021), with the sheer number of such programs making it challenging to coordinate among programs and apply consistent methods. In order to facilitate objective and robust conclusions about the status and trends of the marine ecosystems, it is crucial that sampling methods are as consistent as possible while still allowing for practical differences among equipment, vessels, and weather conditions. This need for consistent methodology has been identified in several reports on regional and national marine monitoring frameworks (Hedge et al. 2013, Bowden et al. 2015, Hayes et al. 2015, Hedge et al. 2021), and its contribution to supporting a blue economy is also recognised (Golden et al. 2017).
Although many biological monitoring programs focus on single elements of the marine environment (e.g. Wraith et al. 2013), several large-scale marine monitoring programs that include multiple areas are currently under development or implementation in Australian waters. Table 1 lists some of these programs, as well as the associated indicators to be measured or sampling platforms if specified. Standardised marine monitoring has been done successfully in Australian waters for shallow waters (e.g. underwater visual census in Reef Life Survey) and pelagic animals (e.g. acoustic tagging in IMOS Animal Tracking Facility), but prior to the development of Version 1 of these SOPs, it had not been developed, implemented, and adopted at a national scale for most other biological sampling platforms.
Table 1: Some of the large-scale biological or ecological monitoring programs currently operating or under development in Australia as of Dec 2023. UVC = underwater visual census, DOV = diver-operated video, ROV = remotely operated vehicle, AUV = autonomous underwater vehicle, BRUV = baited remote underwater video, MBES = multibeam echosounder.
| Program | Region | Indicator | Sampling Platforms | Example Reference | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| P E L A G I C | Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) | Global | Plankton assemblages, colour index | CPR | Hosie et al. 2003 | |
| IMOS Animal Tracking Facility | National | Marine megafauna movement | Acoustic telemetry, satellite tracking | Taylor et al. 2017 | ||
| IMOS Ships of Opportunity | National | Temperature, salinity, water column backscatter, biochemistry | Bathythermograph, echosounder, biogeochemical and meteorological sensors | Alory et al. 2007 | ||
| IMOS National Mooring Network | National | Nutrients, microbes, phytoplankton, zooplankton, environmental factors | Moored sensors, water sampling | Sloyan and O’Kane 2015 | ||
| Aquawatch | National | Various | Satellites, water sampling | https://www.csiro.au/en/about/challenges-missions/aquawatch | ||
| Australian Microbiome Initiative | National | Microbial and zooplankton DNA | water sampling | van de Kamp 2019 | ||
| B E N T H I C & D E M E R S A L |
Reef 2050 Integrated Monitoring and Reporting Program | GBR | Various | Various | GBRMPA 2015 | |
| Marine Integrated Monitoring Program | NSW | Various | Aerial imagery, UVC, BRUVs, AUVs, towed imagery, grabs, DOVs, ROVs | Aither 2022 | ||
| WAMSI estuary science program | WA | Various | Various | Thomson et al. 2017 | ||
| RedMap** | National | Fish, invertebrates | UVC, observations | Pecl et al. 2019 | ||
| Reef Life Survey** | Global | Demersal fish and benthic invertebrate assemblages | UVC | Stuart-Smith et al. 2017 | ||
| Long-Term Monitoring Program (AIMS) | GBR and NW Australia | Fish and benthic invertebrate assemblage, coral health and cover | UVC, DOV, Towed imagery | De’ath et al. 2012 | ||
| VIC Signs of Healthy Parks monitoring program | VIC | Various | UVC, drone/UAV, AUV, BRUVS, ROV, towed video, aerial photography | Parks Victoria’s Technical Series | ||
| WA marine monitoring program | WA | Various | Various | Dept Biodiv Conserv Attractions 2017 | ||
| NESP field manual package* | National | Various | MBES, AUV, BRUV, Towed camera, Sled/trawls, Grab/corer, ROV, microplastics, drop camera, socioeconomic survey | Current study | ||
* Primarily benthic and demersal platforms, but also includes an emergent pelagic method (Pelagic BRUVs) ** Citizen science program
Due to the large geographic area, diverse flora and fauna, and range of environmental conditions represented by the Australian Marine estate, a single method of sampling is neither practical nor desirable (Bouchet et al. 2018, Przeslawski et al. 2018). For this reason, we present a standard approach for each of eight key marine benthic sampling platforms that were identified based on frequency of use in previous open water sampling and monitoring programs:
- Multibeam sonar (MBES),
- Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs),
- Benthic Baited Remote Underwater Video (BRUVs),
- Towed imagery,
- Grabs and box corers,
- Sleds and trawls,
- Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), and
- Wide-field stereo drop cameras (drop cam).
Each of these platforms targets a discrete data type (bathymetry, imagery, samples) within particular environments (consolidated, unconsolidated substrates) (Table 2), with specific advantages (Table 3).
We also provide four additional field manuals:
- Survey design to provide guidance on robust sampling design to underpin most of the other field manuals (see Survey Planning section below),
- Pelagic BRUVs as a concept sampling method in pelagic ecosystems due to its similarity to benthic BRUVs,
- Knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) surveys to account for the importance of considering social and cultural values in marine monitoring, and
- Microplastics, a field manual based on the collected data rather than the sampling platforms.
Importantly, the inclusion of these sampling platforms and data in the current version is not an assessment of their value but instead an indication of their frequency of use and suitability for national monitoring (e.g. established methods, dedicated users, integration with existing national programs).
One of the main challenges in assessing marine biodiversity is the lack of standardised approaches for monitoring it (Duffy et al. 2013, Teixeira et al. 2016). As such, the overarching goal of these field manuals is to reduce the bias and variance in data from differences in sampling procedures, thereby ensuring that patterns in data are due to patterns in the community rather than patterns of how or when the community was sampled. If the measured ecological variable and the variation in sampling techniques are confounded, it is challenging if not impossible to objectively determine if observed changes are due to real ecological change or sampling technique. If variability is sufficiently high, real changes that would trigger appropriate management may not be detected in time, if at all.
Importantly, many state marine monitoring programs use their own standard operating protocols (SOPs) relevant for wetland, estuarine, embayment, or intertidal habitats (Table 1). The current package of field manuals is not meant to replace them, but rather to complement them for deeper waters and national monitoring purposes. At the same time, we hope that individual state marine monitoring programs will also identify opportunities to adjust current practices to increase national consistency and that the SOPs will provide an opportunity for industry and industry consultants to contribute to national monitoring through standardising their ongoing activities (Teytelman 2018). To that end, marine managers from all states and territories in Australia were engaged in the process of developing these field manuals. This ensured that methods were similar whenever possible and differences were clearly explained in relation to marine monitoring in Commonwealth waters.
Table 2: Summary of prioritised benthic sampling platforms and their acquisition targets. See text above for definition of abbreviations and acronyms.
| Data Type | Data Target | Spatial coverage | Environment | Chapter | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MBES | Bathymetry, backscatter | Seafloor | Continuous | All | 3 |
| AUV | Imagery | Epifauna, habitat | Continuous | All | 4 |
| BRUV | Imagery | Demersal fish, habitat | Point (qualitative) | All | 5 |
| Towed | Imagery | Epifauna,habitat | Transect | All | 7 |
| Grab/Boxcore | Biological and sediment samples | Macrofauna, infauna | Point | Unconsolidated substrate | 8 |
| Sled/Trawl | Biological and sediment samples | Megafauna, epifauna | Transect (qualitative) | Consolidated substrate | 9 |
| ROV | Imagery* | Epifauna, habitat | Transect | All | 10 |
| Drop cam | Imagery | Epifauna, habitat | Point (qualitative) | All | 11 |
| Survey design | n/a, this field manual is not based on a benthic sampling platform | 2 | |||
| Pelagic BRUV | n/a, this field manual is not based on a benthic sampling platform | 6 | |||
| KAP surveys | n/a, this field manual is not based on a benthic sampling platform | 12 | |||
| Microplastics | n/a, this field manual is not based on a benthic sampling platform | 13 | |||
*ROVs can collect biological and geological samples, but the focus of the manual in this package is on imagery.
Table 3: Advantages of prioritised benthic sampling platforms.
| MBES | AUV | BRUV | Towed | Grab/Boxcorer | Sled/Trawl | ROV | Drop Cam | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Continuous (i.e. grid) broad-scale spatial coverage | X | |||||||
| Continuous (i.e. grid) fine-scale spatial coverage | X | |||||||
| Non-extractive | X | X | X | X | X | X | ||
| Able to revisit exact sites (repeatability) | X | X | X | |||||
| Able to sample over variety of environments | X | X | X | X | X | X | ||
| Species-level identifications1 | X | X | X2 | |||||
| Genetic, morphological etc analysis possible | X | X | X2 | |||||
| Behaviour observed | X | X | X | X | ||||
| Cryptofauna included | X | X | ||||||
| Quantitative | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | |
| Concurrent physical and biological data | X | X | X | X | X | X | ||
| Minimal technical expertise | X | X | X | X | X3 | X | ||
| Vessel flexibility | X | X | X | X3 | ||||
| 1 Refers to identifications able to be made with unknown or cryptic species (i.e. well-known, distinctive species can be identified via imagery) 2 Only possible when the ROV is equipped with sampling capability. This is outside the focus on the ROV manual 3 This only applies to small off-the-shelf ROVs, Working class ROVs require technical expertise and specific vessel specifications |
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