The Ningaloo Marine Park in Western Australia stretches from Red Bluff northwards, round the North West Cape then southwards on the eastern side of the Cape, finishing close to Exmouth.

The park boundaries encompass most of the fringing Ningaloo Reef – the largest in Australia and among the longest in the world – as well as a significant area in the adjacent continental shelf seawards of the reef crest.

The Marine Park contains highly diverse shallow water marine ecosystems typical of tropical coral reef habitats, but detailed characterisation of the area’s biodiversity is a work in progress.

The majority of Ningaloo Marine Park’s 4,566km² lies in waters beyond the fringing reefs in depths greater than 30m that are rarely visited by scientific diving teams.

To find out more about the sea floor habitats and communities of the deeper waters, AIMS is leading a major collaborative study to develop broad scale habitat maps and improved bathymetric maps and to establish baseline species inventories.

Co-funded by the WA Government’s Ningaloo Research Program and supported by expertise at the University of WA, Curtin University and the WA Museum, the project combines advanced underwater video equipment, scientific acoustic mapping tools and more traditional sediment sampling devices trawls such as sediment grabs and benthic sleds.

A towed video system combined with high resolution still cameras is used to capture a visual record of the sea floor in different areas of the marine park and to quantify the general diversity, abundance and variability in these communities.

Major variations in depth, degree of habitat complexity and sediment types are associated with different types of fish communities. These are being characterised. Scientists are using deployed baited remote underwater video (BRUVs) cameras, which attract fish to the camera’s field of view. Stereo BRUVS are the tool of choice, allowing the fish to be identified, measured and recorded in the AIMS national fish ID database.

The initial field surveys have revealed a wealth of information about the diverse array of filter feeding communities in the deep waters of the Marine Park. These communities seem to vary in composition depending on depth and position and can be dominated by sponges, soft corals, whip corals or gorgonians.

While reef building corals remain an important component of the reef fronts in many places throughout the Ningaloo Marine Park, rodolith fields, limestone ledges covered in filterfeeders and vast areas of sand are the more commonly encountered and notable habitat types encountered in the surveys.