Spatiotemporal variability of epibenthic assemblages in Moreton Bay

Raw data on the abundance and percentage cover of epibenthic taxa identified during surveys in Moreton Bay from 1998-2002 and 2012-2015. Surveys were taken using underwater videography at a total of 63 sites and used to determine where and how epibenthic assemblage structure had changed from 1998 to 2015. Original surveys were taken from 1998-2002 for a habitat mapping study (Stevens & Connolly 2004). Resurveys of a subset of sites were taken from 2012-2014 by a study conducted for the Queensland Department of Science, Information, Technology, Innovation and the Arts (Stevens & Richmond 2014). Re-surveys of the remaining sites that had not yet been revisited were taken in 2015 and were combined with the 2012-2014 data, for comparison with the 1998-2002 data.From each survey a total of 50 still images were extracted at 5 second intervals, and the abundance or percentage cover of each identifiable organism was determined. These values were then divided by 50 to obtain the relative abundance and percentage cover of each species per site. This data was then incorporated into Primer E (v.6) for analysis.The relative influence of abiotic variables on assemblage structure was determined using long term data on sediment mud content (O'Brien, Tuazon et al. 2012) and on other abiotic variables such as sea surface temperature, turbidity and nutrient content (made available from the Healthy Waterways Ecosystem Health and Monitoring Program).