Connectivity and Influence of Esso Subsea Pipelines: Integrating Fine-scale Burial and Abundance Estimates

Updated: 2026-04-02

Building upon previous AIMS-led research and expanding the focus to additional subsea pipeline and concrete gravity structures (and including all platforms) to fill critical knowledge gaps associated with identifying the ecological role or value of these structures for fish and benthic invertebrate population dynamics. The overall objective was to quantify the relative importance of Esso infrastructure and evaluate the spatial-temporal variability in connectivity across five key species. We focused primarily on subsea pipelines and evaluated the ecological importance of individual pipeline segments. Specifically, we aimed to i) Quantify the connectivity and metapopulation dynamics, including the temporal variability in marine organisms, following recent updates in pipeline burial data and adult abundance estimates, ii) Conduct a brief sensitivity analysis to quantify the impact of our improved field-based abundance data, iii) Develop preliminary adult movement models and estimate patch-importance, and iv) Quantify network resilience and patch-importance with ‘network attack’ algorithms. Finally, we endeavoured to identify high-priority knowledge gaps to be considered in future work.