Our decision to classify fish as either pelagic or demersal based upon the description from
FishBase (Froese and Pauly, 2011) may not capture the subtle differences in habitat association
amongst different species. Most hotspots of pelagic diversity occur in association with, or adjacent
to, coral reefs, seamounts, shelf breaks or other prominent topographical features (Worm et al., 2003;
Morato et al., 2010). Since species that preferentially associate with the seabed sometimes appeared at
South Passage and Sandy Bay, we most likely lost power to distinguish fish assemblages by restricting
our analysis to those species defined as ‘pelagic’, and the distinction in fish assemblage is probably
conservative.