South‑east Australia’s continental shelf and slope support diverse benthic communities. This region is undergoing rapid environmental change driven by the southward intensification and warming of the East Australian Current, contributing to shifts in species distributions, community composition, and local abundance. Because many demersal fishes and benthic invertebrate assemblages are tightly linked to seafloor habitats, understanding how these habitats are changing is essential for interpreting broader ecosystem responses.
The South-East Australian Marine Ecosystem Survey (SEA-MES) is a multi-voyage program, conducted over four years, designed to quantify these changes by revisiting areas first surveyed in the 1990s. As part of this program, a towed camera system was used to characterise benthic habitats and biodiversity and to compare contemporary imagery with legacy datasets. Imagery was analysed to classify physical habitat types, map sessile benthic communities (including sponges, corals, and other invertebrates), and identify and enumerate associated demersal fishes.
These data strengthen ecological baselines for the region and provide critical information on how seafloor habitats and biological communities have changed over several decades. The results provide national benefits to managing Australia’s Southeast Marine Park Network, environmental assessments for offshore energy decommissioning and renewable energy expansion, and fisheries management, while providing new baselines for long-term ecosystem monitoring.