The National Marine Bioregionalisation is a major scientific project headed by the National Oceans Office, designed to help define ecosystem boundaries in Australia's ocean territory. It brings together and illustrates the complexity and variability of marine environments and supports Australia's Oceans Policy commitment to an ecosystem-based approach to oceans management.

The National Marine Bioregionalisation is a major scientific project headed by the National Oceans Office, designed to help define ecosystem boundaries in Australia's ocean territory. It brings together and illustrates the complexity and variability of marine environments and supports Australia's Oceans Policy commitment to an ecosystem-based approach to oceans management.

The National Marine Bioregionalisation is a major scientific project headed by the National Oceans Office, designed to help define ecosystem boundaries in Australia's ocean territory. It brings together and illustrates the complexity and variability of marine environments and supports Australia's Oceans Policy commitment to an ecosystem-based approach to oceans management.

The National Oceans Office undertook in September 2001 an analysis of Bioregionalisation for the Australian South-east Marine Region, an integration of geological, oceanographic and biological data as the basis for bioregionalisation. The biological and physical assessment was intended to contribute to the implementation of ecosystem-based management in the South-east Marine Region by developing a shared understanding of the ecosystem. The assessment had two streams, ecosystem structure and ecosystem function and incorporated the input from these projects among others: - Production of a consistent, high quality bathymetric data grid for the south-east marine region. - Seabed characterisation including geomorphology, acoustic facies and seabed sampling (GA) - Computer sediment modelling (GEOMAT) - Refine Broad Scale Bioregionalisation (Provinces and Biomes) (CSIRO) - Upgrade deepwater nutrient, water properties and ocean current models (CSIRO) - Rapid assembly of ecological fish data (CSIRO Marine Research in collaboration with Australian Museum, Victoria Museum and NSW Fisheries) - Rapid assembly of ecological invertebrate data (Museum Victoria in partnership with Australia Museum and CSIRO Marine Research) - Bioregionalisation analysis for the South-east Marine Region (CSIRO Marine Research and Australian Geological Survey Organisation [GA]) This dataset contains the spatial distribution of the physical and biological components of the Region resulting from bioregionalisation analysis for the South-east Marine Region. Further detail will be available in the report entitled "An Interim, Draft bioregionalisation for the continental slope and deeper waters of the South-East Marine Region of Australia" by A. Butler, P. Harris et al. (draft only available at time of this metadata compilation).

The current National Marine Bioregionalisation project, coordinated by the Nation Oceans Office, consists of both pelagic (water column) and benthic (seafloor) components. The intended outcome of the National Marine Bioregionalisation is a set of bioregions for the Australian Marine Jurisdiction which will underpin a spatial framework to support planning and management of Australia's oceans. This report outlines the work on the pelagic regionalisation. The Pelagic Integration project aims to map and describe pelagic bioregions of the Australian Marine Jurisdiction (AMJ) with a particular focus on regions offshore of the continental shelf. Where possible it will complement the existing shelf pelagic bioregions of the Interim Marine and Coastal Regionalisation of Australia (IMCRA v3.3). In the process of the current regionalisation, we expect to produce datasets and analyses that may assist with a future update of the IMCRA pelagic bioregions and their descriptions. Hence, results of this project should not be extrapolated onto the continental shelf. CSIRO Marine Research has responsibility for the Pelagic Integration as part of its contribution to a Consortium (along with the National Oceans Office and Geosciences Australia (GA)) effort in the NMB integration projects.

This dataset presents an interim provincial-scale bioregionalisation for the shelf region of the Australian EEZ. The regionalisations were derived from RAP (Rapid Assessment Procedure) analyses of available fish distribution data. The dynamic evolution of the marine biota and the extensive mixing of species assemblages is catered for by the introduction of biotones. Bioregions are shown to be extensive and highly diverse, containing species from a number of core provinces. A provincial scale bioregionalisation was derived for the pelagic and demersal systems separately. The pelagic bioregionalisation comprises 4 bioregions (two provinces and two zootones) of much more extensive spatial scale that the demersal bioregionalisation (17 bioregions, 9 provinces and 8 biotones). Distribution maps for approx. 150 key fish species used to construct the bioregions are indexed separately (see graphics link and "related datasets"). The data are also linked to oceanographic regionalisation data (see documentation link for details).

A regionalisation of Australian waters (excluding waters adjacent to the Territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands, and waters adjacent to the Australian Antarctic Territory) derived from deep-water demersal fish assemblages. A total of 41 onshelf and offshelf provincial bioregions were identified for IMCRA v4.0.Onshelf provincial bioregions are based on the 17 IMCRA v3.3 demersal provinces and biotones identified in 1997.Offshelf provincial bioregions were defined in 2004 as part of a program run by Geoscience Australia, CSIRO Marine Research and the National Oceans Office. They represent units that contain broad patterns in biodiversity, as represented by deep-water demersal fish assemblages, based on the assumption that the demersal fish distributions are a surrogate of marine faunal distributions. Below 2,000 m water depth, the boundaries of the benthic provincial bioregions are defined solely by the NMB (National Marine Bioregionalisation) geomorphic features data set. A total of 24 offshelf benthic provincial bioregions were defined on this basis, including 15 core bioregions representing areas of endemism, and 9 transition zones representing areas of faunal mixing.For IMCRA v4.0 the coastline was replaced with the national 100k coastline to provide greater consistency. The Australian EEZ limit was sourced from AMB v2. Based on a decision by the Bioregionalisation Working Group, the shelf break from IMCRA v3.3 was largely retained, although in some instances the shelf break from the NMB (National Marine Bioregionalisation) provincial bioregions was used.