Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Battery Point, TAS, 7004, Australia.
Centre for Marine Socioecology, University of Tasmania, Sandy Bay, TAS, 7005, Australia.
Sci Rep. 2024 Aug 13;14(1):18796. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-68512-6.
Marine monitoring efforts are increasingly supported by opportunistic shipboard surveys. However, opportunistic survey methods often require adaptation to suit the vessel and the operations being conducted onboard. Whilst best-practice techniques for surveying marine wildlife on vessels of opportunity are yet to be established, testing and development of alternative methods can provide means for capturing ecological information in otherwise under-surveyed areas. Explicitly, survey methods can be improved while baseline ecological data for new regions are gathered simultaneously. Herein, we tested different survey approaches on a vessel of opportunity in a remote offshore area where little is known about the community composition of top-order marine vertebrate predators: western and south-western Tasmania, Australia. We found that continuous surveys provide greater species counts than structured "snapshot" surveys over the course of a voyage, but that structured surveys can be more practical when managing factors such as observer fatigue. Moreover, we provide a baseline dataset on the marine vertebrate community encountered in western and south-western Tasmania. This information will be critically important for industry and conservation management objectives, and is key to our understanding of the offshore ecosystem around Tasmania.
海洋监测工作越来越多地得到机会性船舶调查的支持。然而，机会性调查方法通常需要适应船舶和船上进行的操作。虽然在机会性船舶上调查海洋野生动物的最佳实践技术尚未建立，但测试和开发替代方法可以为在 otherwise under-surveyed 地区获取生态信息提供手段。明确地说，在收集新地区的基线生态数据的同时，可以改进调查方法。在此，我们在一个偏远的近海地区的机会性船舶上测试了不同的调查方法，在该地区，人们对顶级海洋脊椎动物捕食者的群落组成知之甚少：澳大利亚塔斯马尼亚州的西部和西南部。我们发现，在航行过程中，连续调查提供的物种数量多于结构化的“快照”调查，但当管理观察员疲劳等因素时，结构化调查可能更实用。此外，我们还提供了在塔斯马尼亚州西部和西南部遇到的海洋脊椎动物群落的基线数据集。这些信息对于行业和保护管理目标至关重要，也是我们了解塔斯马尼亚周围近海生态系统的关键。
