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2021 State of the Environment Report Marine Chapter – Expert Assessment – State and Trend - Water column – deep (>200 m)

Created 21/12/2025

Updated 21/12/2025

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The Marine chapter of the 2021 State of the Environment (SoE) report incorporates multiple expert templates developed from streams of marine data. This metadata record describes the Expert Assessment "State and Trend of Water column – deep (>200 m)". A PDF of the full Expert Assessment, including figures and tables (where provided) is downloadable in the "On-line Resources" section of this record as "EXPERT ASSESSMENT 2021 - State and Trend - Water column – deep (>200 m)"

DESCRIPTION OF HABITAT/COMMUNITY FOR EXPERT ASSESSMENT The parts of the water column of the open ocean that lie below the surface 200 m (the epipelagic zone) are widely known as the mesopelagic zone (most commonly defined as 200 to 1000 m), the bathypelagic zone (1000 to 4000 m) and the abyssal zone (> 4000 m). Much of the life found in these deeper waters occurs primarily in the mesopelagic layer, which is also commonly called the ‘ocean twilight zone’. The mesopelagic zone (along with the waters of the bathypelagic and abyss; hereon collectively termed the “deep water column”) is arguably the most under-studied part of the world’s ocean (St John et al 2016; Martin et al 2020), but supports globally important ecosystem services playing a key role in ocean carbon drawdown and supporting important biodiversity values including major prey resources for predators such as tunas and many marine mammals (St John et al 2016; Hidalgo & Browman 2019; Kwong et al. 2020).

DATA STREAM(S) USED IN EXPERT ASSESSMENT Information for this assessment was drawn from peer-reviewed publications (including other SoE 2021 expert assessments).

2021 SOE ASSESSMENT SUMMARY [see attached Expert Assessment for full details]

• 2021 • Assessment grade: Good Assessment trend: Stable Confidence grade: Limited Confidence trend: Very limited Comparability: Somewhat comparable • 2016 • Assessment grade: Good Assessment trend: Unclear Confidence grade: Limited Confidence trend: Very limited Comparability: Somewhat comparable • 2011 • Assessment grade: Very good Assessment trend: Stable Confidence grade: Limited Confidence trend: Limited

CHANGES SINCE 2016 SOE ASSESSMENT The delineation of water column habitats/communities has changed since 2016, but the state and trend were uniform across all water column habitats/communities in 2016, meaning that the 2016 and 2021 assessments are comparable despite the change in delineation.

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Additional Info

Field Value
Title 2021 State of the Environment Report Marine Chapter – Expert Assessment – State and Trend - Water column – deep (>200 m)
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/35829d9b-dac7-47ea-bd9c-d81a1ee282ba
Contact Point
Australian Ocean Data Network
info@aodn.org.au
Reference Period 25/08/2021
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
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      ],
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      ]
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  ],
  "type": "Polygon"
}
Data Portal Australian Oceans Data Network

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Australian Oceans Data Network "2021 State of the Environment Report Marine Chapter – Expert Assessment – State and Trend - Water column – deep (>200 m)". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://catalogue.aodn.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/2021-state-of-the-environment-report-marine-chapter-expert-assessment-state-and-trend-water-col