Southern Surveyor Voyage SS 10/2005 - Voyage of discovery - benthic biodiversity of the deep continental shelf and slope in Australia's "South West Region"

The scientific objectives for the survey were split across two voyages (SS07/2005 for leg 1 and SS10/2005 for leg 2). The first leg was to map and visually survey (video) the upper continental slope (and at selected sites transects from the outer shelf to the mid-slope) at regular intervals of 1deg latitude; the second leg was to targeted sample the surveyed locations to document the benthic biodiversity. Epibenthic megafauna was sampled in 123 stations using the epibenthic sled Sherman and a beamtrawl at roughly 1 degree intervals from Bald Island in southern WA to Barrow Island (northern WA), at 100 and 400m depth; additional depths (200m, 700m 1000m) were sampled at targeted 'transect sites'. Invertebrate specimens were photographed and lodged with Australian Museums for identification, focused on sponges, corals, echinoderms, crustaceans, molluscs and ascidians. To date (Sept. 2014) we are aware of 27 taxonomic revisions or descriptions have been published from this collection. Fishes were only collected by chance, they are lodged with the CSIRO Fish Collection. The data of the biological samples is described here.