Seabed Biodiversity on the Continental Shelf of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area (Prawn Trawl)

Updated: 2020-11-16

The mobile invertebrate and fish biodiversity of the 200,000 km² area of the GBR shelf seabed was sampled by a 1 km tow of a 8 fthm otter trawl (single high-flying Florida Flyer) at 458 sites, representing a wide range of known physical environments, during four 1-month-long voyages on the QDPIF vessel Gwendoline May. More than 4,800 species/species-equivalent OTUs (operational taxonomic units) were identified. The dataset comprises 42,813 site-by-species records.