Fish survey of South Passage Shark Bay, Western Australia: Fishes Checklist

J. Barry Hutchins

doi:10.25607/zzrggg

Fish survey of South Passage Shark Bay, Western Australia: Fishes Checklist

Citation

Hutchins J B, Earl C (2023). Fish survey of South Passage Shark Bay, Western Australia: Fishes Checklist. Version 2.0. OBIS Secretariat. Occurrence dataset. https://doi.org/10.25607/zzrggg accessed via GBIF.org on 2025-07-18.

Description

In April 1979, 323 species of fish were recorded from the South Passage area of Shark Bay. The majority of these are tropical species (83%), with smaller numbers of warm temperate (11%) and cool temperate (6%) species. Many of the tropical species, however, were found to be present in only low numbers, while some warm temperate and one cool temperate species were abundant. The fishes of South Passage, therefore, are considered to belong to an impoverished tropical fauna. Furthermore, South Passage is the southernmost mainland area of Western Australia which supports a predominantly tropical fish fauna. Its fauna is even more diverse than that of the Houtman Abrolhos, a very much larger area of offshore islands and coral reefs located to the south off Geraldton.

Purpose

These data were made accessible through UNESCO's eDNA Expeditions project to mobilize available marine species and occurrence datasets from World Heritage Sites.

Sampling Description

Method steps

See Github Project and R Notebook for dataset construction methods

Additional info

marine, harvested by iOBIS

Taxonomic Coverages

Fishes

Agnatha
rank: Superclass
Chondrichthyes
rank: unranked
Osteichthyes
rank: unranked

Geographic Coverages

Shark Bay, Western Australia

Bibliographic Citations

Hutchins, J. (1990). Fish survey of South Passage Shark Bay, Western Australia. In Berry, P., Bradshaw, S. & Wilson, B. (eds), Research in Shark Bay. Report of the France-Australe Bicentenary Expedition Committee. Western Australia Museum. Pp. 263-278. -

Contacts

J. Barry Hutchins
originator
Western Australian Museum

Chandra Earl
metadata author
position: eDNA Scientific Officer
UNESCO
email: c.earl@unesco.org

Chandra Earl
processor
position: eDNA Scientific Officer
UNESCO
email: c.earl@unesco.org

OBIS Secretariat
administrative point of contact
position: Secretariat
OBIS
email: helpdesk@obis.org