GOBI Biogeographies of the Indian and South West Pacific Oceans

The development of new bioregions draws on experience in CSIRO, Global Ocean Biodiversity Initiative (GOBI) partners, and other collaborators, using approaches currently being trialled in Australia and around the Antarctic margins, and has collaborated with regional and national stakeholders to ensure a consistent approach. This combines approaches CSIRO developed in Australia (Last et al. 2010), used in the Bay of Bengal (BOBLME 2015) with similar approaches that have been used throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans to derive a single combined bioregionalisation.
The new bioregionalisations for the south west Pacific and Indian Oceans incorporate understanding of shallow, deep and pelagic species, ecosystems, physical environments and their likely boundaries based on current information. The expert-based bioregionalisations are be supported by development of statistical analysis of datasets of selected species groups to identify bioregions specific for each taxon, with data from the Biologically or Ecologically Significant Marine Areas (EBSA) process and additional regional biogeography based on new invertebrate and fish collections from CSIRO, University of Tasmania, Museum Victoria and regional partners.