Joseph Turner

The Biodiversity Consultancy · Technical

Seagrass meadows support complex species assemblages and provide ecosystem services with a multitude of socio-economic benefits. However, they are sensitive to anthropogenic pressures such as coastal development, agricultural run-off, and overfishing. The increasing prevalence of marine heatwaves (MHWs) due to climate change poses an additional and...

Depth gradients are known to drive patterns of adult and juvenile coral distribution, but the influence on early successional communities and subsequent interactions with coral larvae settlement are poorly understood. We studied how early successional communities changed across a 40 m depth gradient to test whether patterns of coral larvae settleme...

Mesophotic coral ecosystems (MCEs) and temperate mesophotic ecosystems (TMEs) occur at depths of roughly 30–150 m depth and are characterized by the presence of photosynthetic organisms despite reduced light availability. Exploration of these ecosystems dates back several decades, but our knowledge remained extremely limited until about a decade ag...

Mesophotic coral ecosystems (MCEs) and temperate mesophotic ecosystems (TMEs) have received increasing research attention during the last decade as many new and improved methods and technologies have become more accessible to explore deeper parts of the ocean. However, large voids in knowledge remain in our scientific understanding, limiting our ab...

Aim: To investigate how changing grid size can alter model predictions of the distribution of mesophotic taxa and how it affects different modelling methods. Location: Ningaloo Marine Park, Western Australia. Taxon: Benthic mesophotic taxa: corals, macroalgae and sponges. Methods: We determined the distributions of the major benthic taxonomic...

There is currently very limited information around the spatial patterns of coral recruitment at mesophotic depths globally. This study investigated depth-related differences in coral recruitment patterns from shallow (~ 3 m) to mesophotic depths (~ 40 m) in the Indian Ocean. A new method is described for assessing coral recruitment, which allows fo...

Despite a growing understanding of the importance of mesophotic ecosystems, they remain relatively unexplored globally, and particularly in the Indian Ocean. The composition of benthic communities of the Ningaloo Marine Park in deeper water (> 20 m) was determined using autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Environmental variables collected by the...

Numerous machine-learning classifiers are available for benthic habitat map production, which can lead to different results. This study highlights the performance of the Random Forest (RF) classifier, which was significantly better than Classification Trees (CT), Naïve Bayes (NB), and a multi-model ensemble in terms of overall accuracy, Balanced Er...

Mesophotic coral ecosystems (MCEs) occur at depths beyond those typically associated with coral reefs. Significant logistical challenges associated with data collection in deep water have resulted in a limited understanding of the ecological relevance of these deeper coral ecosystems. We review the trends in this research, covering the geographic s...

There is increasing recognition that the effective acquisition and interpretation of underwater video and still image data for biodiversity is growing in importance. Numerous organisations (e.g. Statutory Nature Conservation Bodies (SNCBs), Inshore Fisheries Conservation Authorities (IFCAs), environmental consultancy agencies, industry and academic...

The guidelines in this document provide a summary of current best practice for the acquisition of video and stills imaging of benthic substrata and epibenthic species to ensure that data collected are fit for purpose in relation to the needs and requirements of a survey.

The guidelines in this document provide a summary of current best practice for the acquisition of video and stills imaging of benthic substrata and epibenthic species to ensure that data collected are fit for purpose in relation to the needs and requirements of a survey.

The guidelines in this document provide a summary of current best practice for the acquisition of video and stills imaging of benthic substrata and epibenthic species to ensure that data collected are fit for purpose in relation to the needs and requirements of a survey.

Coral colony size-frequency distribution data offer valuable information about the ecological status of coral reefs. Such data are usually collected by divers in situ, but stereo video is being increasingly used for monitoring benthic marine communities and may be used to collect size information for coral colonies. This study compared the size-fre...

Abstrak Damselfish adalah kelompok ikan dengan jumlah besar dan tingkat keanekaragaman tinggi yang merupakan komponen fungsional penting dalam sistem terumbu karang. Banyak dari spesies ini memiliki asosiasi habitat yang kuat, sehingga ikan-ikan ini sensitif terhadap perubahan dalam kualitas habitat terumbu karang. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah...