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Comment on: Williams et al (2009) -Australia's Deep-water Reserve Network: Implications of False Homegeneity for Classifiying Abiotic Surrogates of Biodiversity in ICES Journal of Marine Science, 66: 214-224

Created 20/01/2026

Updated 20/01/2026

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Williams et al. (2009) report on new multibeam sonar bathymetry and underwater video data collected from submarine canyons and seamounts on Australia's southeast continental margin to 'investigate the degree to which geomorphic features act as surrogates for benthic megafaunal biodiversity' (p. 214). The authors describe what they view as deficiencies in the design of the Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the southeast region of Australia, in which geomorphology information was employed as a surrogate to infer regional-scale patterns of benthic biodiversity. This comment is designed to support and underscore the importance of evaluating MPA designs and the validity of using abiotic surrogates such as geomorphology to infer biodiversity patterns, and seeks to clarify some of the discrepancies in geomorphic terminologies and approaches used between the original study and the Williams et al. (2009) evaluation. It is our opinion that the MPA design criteria used by the Australian Government are incorrectly reported by Williams et al. (2009). In particular, we emphasise the necessity for consistent terminology and approaches when undertaking comparative analyses of geomorphic features. We show that the MPA selection criteria used by the Australian Government addressed the issues of false homogeneity described by Williams et al. (2009), but that final placement of MPAs was based on additional stakeholder considerations. Finally, we argue that although the Williams et al. (2009) study provides valuable information on biological distributions within seamounts and canyons, the hypothesis that geomorphic features (particularly seamounts and submarine canyons) are surrogates for benthic biodiversity is not tested explicitly by their study.

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Title Comment on: Williams et al (2009) -Australia's Deep-water Reserve Network: Implications of False Homegeneity for Classifiying Abiotic Surrogates of Biodiversity in ICES Journal of Marine Science, 66: 214-224
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/0e778380-109d-48d3-b9f6-7df7e33ef9dc
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 22/04/2018
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
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Data Portal Data.gov.au