The benefits of establishing long-term ecological programs to monitor ocean health are recognised internationally and the National Marine Science Plan (NMSP) 2015-2025 has identified the need to establish a National Marine Baselines and Monitoring Program to support future management of Australia's marine estate and growth of the blue economy. Broad-scale ichthyoplankton surveys are undertaken routinely on the East coast and cover almost the entire continental shelf (>350,000 square kilometres). However, these surveys are expensive to conduct (>$200,000 each) and currently, only a tiny fraction of the information about the marine environment collected during the surveys is captured in datasets that could be used support management of Australia's marine estate.

Modern DNA-metabarcoding techniques provide an opportunity to determine the presence/absence of eggs and larvae of common fish species in each survey sample. This information could be used to define the spawning area of selected species and determine the features that characterise their spawning habitat. This investment will evaluate the potential for using DNA-metabarcoding of routine broad-scale ichthyoplankton surveys to characterise the spawning habitat and monitor the spawning area of key fish species and their response to climate change and other external pressures.