Port Curtis macrobenthic monitoring programme 1995-2001 : a joint report prepared for: Gladstone Port Authority and Southern Pacific Petroleum (Management)

The bedforms of Port Curtis now represent one of the most intensively sun·eyed areas of soft-sediment in Australian waters. With more than 2600 benthic grab samples processed to date, the benthic sampling effort applied in Port Curtis now far surpasses that level of sampling applied in water bodies adjacent to major metropolitan centres including Port Phillip Bay on Melbourne's foreshore (-1500 grabs: Poore et al., 1975; Poore and Rainier, 1979; Coleman, 1993; Currie and Parry, 1996; Wilson et al., 1998; Currie and Parry, 1999). Despite the wealth of available benthic data for Port Curtis, no attempt has yet been made to examine the environmental significance of any underlying temporal and spatial trends. This paper therefore examines a recent chronology of macrofaunal community structure in Port Curtis, and specifically considers observed differences in relation to physical, climatic and anthropogenic factors.