The Integrated Coastal Analyses and Sensor Technology (ICoAST) project developed new remote sensing and sampling tools to map and monitor key coastal habitats and their links to fisheries, with a strong focus on submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV), seagrass and understanding recruitment in the Western Rock Lobster fishery.
Remote sensing methods, from drones to satellites, were used to map seagrass and macroalgae along the Western Australian coast since 1989, providing critical baselines for habitat change and fisheries management. A novel kernelised aquatic vegetation index greatly improved mapping of submerged aquatic vegetation in Western Rock Lobster zones, enhancing habitat models by incorporating spatially variable vegetation indices.
ICoAST showed that spatially balanced ground-truth survey designs are essential for accurate habitat maps, outperforming preferential designs commonly used in fisheries monitoring.
Integrating these habitat time-series with Western Rock Lobster data revealed a decadal disconnect between larval settlement and fishery recruitment driven by changes in nearshore habitats, underscoring the importance of SAV and seagrass dynamics for stock forecasts and climate-resilient lobster management.
These methods, facilitated by spatially balanced groundtruthing, were also scaled-up to synthesise national data and produce robust habitat maps for the continental shelf across the south-west bioregion and South-west Network of the Australian Marine Parks.