We respectfully acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the Sea Country across all regions visited during our expeditions. We honour their enduring connection to the ocean and recognise the deep knowledge, care, and custodianship that First Nations peoples have sustained for millennia. We pay our respects to Elders past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

We acknowledge that the waters, reefs, islands, and marine life we sampled and explored are part of living cultural landscapes. We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to conduct research on Country. In the spirit of reconciliation, we remain committed to listening to, learning from, and partnering with First Nations communities in our efforts to understand, protect, and conserve these vital ecosystems for future generations.

This work was only possible with the support of community partners and collaborators across multiple regions, and we extend a heartfelt thanks to all of our collaborators on land whose support was instrumental to the success of this project. This includes the staff of DCCEEW and Parks Australia; the Shires of Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands; Cocos Marine Care; Sea Country Solutions; the Yamatji Sea Rangers; and the Esperance Tjaltjraak Native Title Aboriginal Corporation.

Minderoo OceanOmics Centre at the University of Western Australia brings together advanced molecular capabilities to support genomic research across marine systems. We sincerely acknowledge the OceanOmics Centre team for their unwavering dedication, perseverance, and outstanding efforts in processing complex samples to produce big data. Their technical leadership and commitment to delivering high-quality genomic outputs, is integral to our ability to translate raw expedition data into meaningful insights that advance our understanding of marine biodiversity.

The Deep-Sea Research Centre is dedicated to expanding our understanding of the deep ocean by discovering new species, assessing marine biodiversity, mapping the ocean floor, and charting deep-sea habitats. We gratefully acknowledge the Deep-Sea Research Centre team for their exceptional expertise and commitment in facilitating sample collection during large-scale, logistically challenging deep-sea expeditions. We recognise the Centre’s capabilities, infrastructure, and support as critical to accessing the abyssal and hadal marine environments, contributing significantly to this research.

The CSIRO National Biodiversity DNA Library is an initiative to generate the comprehensive reference sequences needed to identify Australia’s biodiversity from DNA. The initiative is a collaboration between CSIRO, Australia’s research collections and a range of philanthropic and government agencies. The NBDL will generate data from expertly identified specimens held in Australia’s museums and herbaria, bringing new capability to biodiversity research, and enabling the uptake of new technologies to describe and detect changes in biodiversity from DNA that organisms leave behind in the environment. The NBDL will launch as a digital platform with its first available data in 2025. The findings presented here are powered by provisional reference data provided under a partnership with the CSIRO National Biodiversity DNA Library, for which we extend our thanks to NBDL collection partners and Bioplatforms Australia.

A big thanks to all the captains and dedicated crew from Pangaea Ocean Explorer, Immortalis and the R.V. Investigator. Your support, expertise, and seamanship made it possible for us to reach some of the most remote and pristine corners of the ocean - and to document the magnificent marine life that thrives there. We couldn’t have done it without you.

We extend our deepest thanks to Illumina for their critical and ongoing collaboration. Their cutting-edge sequencing technology has been integral to the generation of all the genomic data featured in this project. From support for at-sea sequencing during expeditions to high-throughput operations at Minderoo OceanOmics Centre at UWA, Illumina’s collaboration and expertise have been indispensable to our efforts to accelerate marine biodiversity discovery and conservation.

We gratefully acknowledge the team at Ocean Diagnostics for their collaboration, innovation, and steadfast support. Their instrumentation transformed the way we collect eDNA in the field, enabling efficient, high-quality sampling even in remote and logistically challenging environments. We’re especially thankful for their responsive technical support, which has been invaluable during fieldwork.

We're grateful to Wilderlab for providing comprehensive tree-of-life eDNA data that extended far beyond our vertebrate focus. Their accessible visualisation tools help make complex biodiversity results easier to explore and interpret. We appreciate their ongoing support and collaboration in advancing the use of eDNA monitoring in our region.

Thanks to Epi for their careful design and expert data science which has brought our complex, multi-million dollar DNA dataset to life. We couldn’t be more happy with the result — a collaborative process from Day one that has empowered both us, and end users, that visit this dashboard. We appreciate their ongoing support and collaboration in advancing the usability of eDNA data.