Speare and Stowar, 2007 

"Fishers broadly use the term “shoal” to describe submerged bottom features that attract and hold significant numbers of fish in areas away from obvious emergent coral reef.

The extensive inter-reefal habitats on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) possess an enormous lack of information on fish communities and their associated habitats at scales suited to management. Biographical, oceanographic processes, ontogenic movements, and fishing are some of the factors influencing the structure and biodiversity of these inter-reefal, relatively deep water fish communities (Brinkman et al. 2002, Longhurst and Pauly 1987). The associated benthic communities, often occurring on coarse sediments, include sponges, gorgonians, alcyonarians, corals and marine plants in great diversity (Birtles and Arnold 1988). They may possess a structural complexity which enhances protection and feeding opportunities for fish beyond that which less structurally complex habitats might sustain. These important but little understood reservoirs of fish biodiversity can be impacted by fishing directly (Sainsbury et al. 1997) or through habitat alteration (Pitcher et al. 2005)."

Targeted fish species

"The shoals included in this study were each centred on small rocky outcrops ranging in size from tens to hundreds of metres in extent. The species richness associated with this habitat from each of the three study sites tended to reflect their relative sizes. The species richness on the shoal sites in the Cardwell area was relatively low in comparison to that recorded from the other two regional survey areas off Cairns and Townsville (Figure b8)."

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Citation and/or URL

Speare, P. and Stowar, M., 2007, 'Preliminary findings from the first baseline survey of the Magnetic Shoals', Project Progress Report, Unpubished report to Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility, Reef and Rainforest Research Centre Limited, Cairns (22pp.).

Spatial Coverage

Shoals off Townsville, Cardwell and Cairns

Temporal Coverage

 2006/07

Update Frequency

Not applicable

Other Information

This is a pilot project and may develop into and long term monitoring program