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ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil Advance Access originally published online on August 21, 2009
ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil 2009 66(10):2082-2085; doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsp207
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© Australian Government, Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism 2009

Comment on: Williams et al. (2009) "Australia's deep-water reserve network: implications of false homogeneity for classifying abiotic surrogates of biodiversity". ICES Journal of Marine Science, 66: 214–224

Peter T. Harris, Andrew D. Heap, Tara J. Anderson and Brendan Brooke

Marine and Coastal Environment Group, Geoscience Australia, GPO Box 378, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia

Correspondence to P. T. Harris: tel: +61 2 6249 9611; fax: +61 2 6249 9920; e-mail: peter.harris{at}ga.gov.au

Harris, P. T., Heap, A. D., Anderson, T. J., and Brooke, B. 2009. Comment on: Williams et al. (2009) "Australia's deep-water reserve network: implications of false homogeneity for classifying abiotic surrogates of biodiversity". ICES Journal of Marine Science, 66: 214–224. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 66: 2082–2085.

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 also 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 emphasize 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.

Keywords: Australia, benthic biodiversity, Marine Protected Areas, selection criteria, surrogates

Received 30 March 2009; accepted 23 June 2009; advance access publication 21 August 2009.


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A. Williams, N. J. Bax, and R. J. Kloser
Remarks on "Comment on: Williams et al. (2009) Australia's deep-water reserve network: implications of false homogeneity for classifying abiotic surrogates of biodiversity, ICES Journal of Marine Science, 66: 214-224" by Peter T. Harris, Andrew D. Heap, Tara J. Anderson, and Brendan Brooke
ICES J. Mar. Sci., December 1, 2009; 66(10): 2086 - 2088.
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