Victorian Benthic Habitats - Open Coasts

The Victorian seabed habitat map documents the distribution of broad benthic habitat types in Victorian Coastal Waters to the State’s 3 nautical mile jurisdictional limit. The map was created using a top-down modelling process whereby habitat descriptors were assigned using seafloor structure and biological information derived from multibeam sonar (Victorian Marine Habitat Mapping Project), bathymetric LiDAR (Future Coasts program) and observations from underwater video.Identification of benthic biota, to the lowest discernible taxonomic level, and substrate characteristics were recorded according to the Victorian Towed Video Classification scheme (Ierodiaconou et al. 2007).