Media Releases from AMSA Activities
AMSA2007 Media Releases
Climate Change, Biosecurity and the Effects of Dredging ? Just Some of the Topics Covered at the Marine Science Conference in Melbourne
Seventy percent of the Earth?s population lives in coastal cities supported
by marine resources such as fishing, harbors for shipping, tourism and waste
processing.
Next week (July 9-13) Melbourne is hosting the Annual Australian Marine Science
Association Conference. National and international speakers will reveal how
the field of marine science is more than the study of organisms and their relationship
to the sea.
The Conference will also cover:
? A new vulnerability index provides insights into how climate change
will impact on Australia
? How El Nino is affecting the survival of Australia?s sea lion
population
? The results of a CSIRO review into how climate change will impact on
Australia?s marine life
? Predicting the effect of climate change on coral reef diversity
? The use of under-sea robots to reveal the secrets of the very, very
deep oceans
Key speakers include:
Professor Mark Burgman, from the University of Melbourne?s School of Botany,
recently had one of his scientific papers rated in the top 1% in its field by
the journal, Nature. His area of expertise is: Threat Assessment and Human Impact.
Dr Rob Massom is with the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC. He received
his PhD from the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge.
He then spent three years at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in the US
before coming to Australia.
Dr John Church is an oceanographer with CSIRO?s Marine and Atmospheric
Research and the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC. He is an expert on climate
change and its impact on the oceans.
Professor Mike Keogh is a marine ecologist at the University of Melbourne?s
Department of Zoology. One of his areas of study is the effect of human disturbance
on near-shore marine systems.
Dr Ed Abraham studied at Cambridge University with renowned physicist, Stephen
Hawking. He runs a consultancy group out of New Zealand targeted at clients
in the environmental science areas.
University of the Sea ? Producing the Next Generation of Marine Scientists
The University of the Sea is a practical solution to training the next generation
of marine scientists from Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
The "University of the Sea" is a partnership between the University
of Sydney, the University of New South Wales, the University of Technology Sydney,
the Australian National University, the University of Tokyo, the Korean Ocean
Research and Development Institute, Tongji University China, the Partnership
for Observation of the Global Oceans Canada, the National Institute of Oceanography
Goa, the Indonesian Research Centre for Marine Technology and the Intergovernmental
Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO.
With support from the French Institute for Polar Research, 40 research students
and early career scientists from 14 countries have received invaluable research
experience through involvement in two international expeditions.
The university staff have raised funds from various sources and donated their
time so that there is no cost to the students. At sea the students ?piggy
back? on an international research program, as well as undertaking learning
activities such as lectures and the preparation of posters detailing the various
aspects of data collection and interpretation. They gain hands-on experience
in navigation, seafloor mapping, oceanography and sampling techniques.
The Australian Marine Science Association will be holding its annual conference
in Melbourne July 9-13 ? Dr Elaine Baker from the University of Sydney?s
School of Biological Sciences, will discuss the latest results from the second
University of the Sea expedition. Onboard the RV Marion Dufresne - cores up
to 37 m in length were collected from the Lord Howe Rise as part of a French-Australian
research programme to study climate change and gas hydrates.
Cores comprise carbonate marine sediments, predominantly foraminifera-bearing
nannofossil oozes, with typical beige and brown glacial/interglacial banding.
Rare clay beds are volcanic in origin. The recovered material represents most
of the Pleistocene. The geographic range of the cores extends from the southern
margin of the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool to the Tasman Front documenting a long
record of climate and ocean current variability for the western subtropical
Pacific Ocean.
A Crisis in Marine Science ? No Taxonomists = No Understanding of Australia?s Rich Marine Biodiversity
Less than a fifth of the earth's 10 million species of plants and animals have been cataloged, and taxonomists are backlogged with requests to apply their specialist knowledge to identification problems.
In Australia the problem is even greater. There has been no comprehensive review of marine biodiversity and the rate of loss of marine species is simply unknown.
At next month?s Australian Marine Science Association (AMSA) meeting in Melbourne (July 9-13), one of the main topics will be that taxonomy is a science in decline and that our marine taxonomists are becoming extinct.
Taxonomy is the science that discovers and describes all living things. With 6% of the Southern Hemisphere in the Australian Marine Jurisdiction, Australia oversees a significant proportion of total global marine biodiversity. About one sixth of the world?s 1.5 million described species are marine and two-thirds of the world?s biodiversity is represented by marine species.
It is estimated that the unexplored deep sea (representing about 60% of the Earth?s surface) could hold tens of millions of undiscovered species and that these deep areas rival tropical rainforests in total species numbers.
Taxonomists are crucial for the identification of exotic species such as introduced marine pests, or in the identification of threatened species. Basically the detailed inventories of what is in our seas falls on the shoulders of a dwindling number of marine taxonomists. We are potentially at risk of losing hundreds of marine species ? without ever knowing they existed!
The UN recently identified four critical issues relating to the marine environment
? one is introduced pests. According to Dr Fred Wells, the Principal Management
Officer
Fish and Fish Habitat Program in the WA Department of Fisheries and current
AMSA President, the declining number of taxonomists means that for a number
of major marine specie groups with few, or even no, specialists capable of identifying
species (and therefore introduced species) in that group. ?This makes
it difficult, or even impossible, to know whether a species is introduced and
a potential pest,? he said.
In 2005 AMSA produced a report arguing that taxonomic research and services are seriously underfunded in Australia. In 1991, the US and Canada has 18,000 taxonomists while Australia had less than 500.
Dr Tim O?Hara, from the Melbourne Museum, can discuss the paucity of taxonomists.
Effects of El Nino on Australia?s Sea Lion Population
The El Nino Effect ? and its concomitant increase in ocean temperatures ? has had a negative impact on an Australian sea lion pup population, scientists will reveal at tomorrow?s Australian Marine Science Association conference in Melbourne.
Warmer than typical sea temperatures lead to lower ocean productivity, which
in turn impacts on the ability of sea lions to feed.
The Australian sea lion (Neophoca cinerea) breeds every 18 months, and as such
the breeding period runs across a number of seasons, compared to other annually
breeding seals.
PhD student Rebecca R. McIntosh from the Zoology Department at La Trobe University and her colleagues obtained data from eight cohorts of Australian sea lions marked as pups at Seal Bay, South Australia.
They found that survival of pre-weaning pups (aged to 1.5 years) dropped significantly between 1998 and 2000 when pupping occurred in spring and autumn, and coincided with unusually warm water temperatures resulting from an extreme El Niņo event.
Pup survival increased for the 2001-02 cohort, when the El Niņo moderated.
The El Nino effect appeared to have a reduced impact on juvenile and adult sea lions. But the impact on pups is expected to have a follow on effect on recruitment and pup production, with implications for adult populations in later years.
Project SEA SERPENT: Exploring Australia?s Deep Sea through a Partnership
with the Oil and Gas Industry
Two seemingly disparate groups - science and the oil and gas industry ?
have come together to learn more about the very deep seas.
New research ? using remotely operated vehicles ? at depths previously
not explored will be revealed at the Australian Marine Science Association meeting
in Melbourne (July 9-13). Included in two presentations will be video of the
creatures and environment that lies at ? not only the very deepest parts
of the sea floor ? but also places that represent new frontiers for the
oil and gas industries.
The deep sea is a vast unexplored wilderness as well as a valuable resource
frontier. Yet little is known about deep-sea processes.
To meet growing international demand for oil and gas, companies are extracting
the Earth?s vast deep-sea reserves, while recognizing it must do so with
as little environmental impact as possible.
But environmentally sustainable extraction requires a detailed understanding
of the biological and physical processes in the deep sea. Australia?s
NW Shelf and Bass Strait contain among the largest ocean petroleum and gas reserves
in the world. The only way of conducting experimental ecology in these regions
is to use either manned submersibles or Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs).
While Australia has no manned submersibles, the petroleum and gas industry increasingly uses ROVs for sub-sea intervention, including the installation of platforms, moorings and pipelines.
PROJECT SEA SERPENT is a novel collaboration between universities and industry
using ROVs on the NW Shelf and Bass Strait to develop the fundamental deep-sea
science that will underpin environmentally sustainable drilling practices in
the future through:
? quantifying the effects of deep-sea drilling on benthic biodiversity;
? conducting field experiments to determine the mechanisms underlying
short- and long-term effects of drilling disturbances on individual deep-sea
fauna at the physiological level; and
? determining whether sub-sea structures can create reefs in the deep
sea.
In order to conduct this research scientists at the University of Sydney, UTS,
University of Wollongong and University of Western Australia, are developing
an ecological tool kit to be used by ROVs, including punch cores and modified
Macintyre grabs that can be used for precise sampling of soft sediment communities.
In particular, capturing individual organisms for in situ experimentation at extreme depths is a challenging task, which has led to the development and implementation of new ways of using the robotic arms of ROVs in conjunction with nets and traps to capture deep-sea animals with minimal stress to their physiology.
For an interview with Dr Adele Pile, Adele from the School of Biological Sciences
at the University of Sydney
The Noise of Ships Adding to the Roar of the Ocean ? No Longer a Peaceful Experience for Marine Life
The sea is no longer a place of quiet, interspersed with the noise of waves. Now there is the roar of increasing numbers of ships ? and the growing sounds of shipping noise is having an impact on marine organisms, according to research to be presented this week at the Annual Australian Marine Science Association meeting in Melbourne (July 9-13)
Dr Douglas Cato from the Defence Science and Technology Organisation and University of Sydney Institution of Marine Science has studied the contribution of shipping noise to the overall acoustic noise in the ocean ? and its effect on marine animals.
Because sound travels much better through water than light does, marine animals make extensive use of sound. While high noise levels are evident from a passing ship, a more pervasive noise is the background noise from many distant ships, known as traffic noise.
Because of the good propagation of sound in the ocean, ships at large distances across an ocean basin contribute to traffic noise even though an individual ship would not be detectable as such. Marine animals will be intermittently exposed to high noise levels from passing ships, but they will be exposed continuously to traffic noise.
Much of the work on ambient noise in the ocean has been conducted near North America and Europe, where shipping densities, and thus traffic noise, are among the highest in the world.
Traffic noise around Australia varies substantially as a result of variations
in shipping densities and sound propagation, and in some areas is negligible.
This has allowed Cato and his team to study the range of natural ambient noise
that is obscured by traffic noise in high shipping areas. He will reveal, at
the Conference, data on the contribution of noise from shipping on a global
scale and its potential impact on marine animals by comparing the noise exposure
from shipping with that of the natural sources of ambient noise. Background
noise from breaking waves and from marine animals themselves at times approaches
the highest levels of traffic noise.
The Environmental Impact of Dredging ? Implication for Port Philip and
Beyond
In March the Port of Melbourne Corporation released its 1400 page report into
the environmental effects of its channel deepening project.
The report argued that channel dredging ? which would involve the shifting
of more than 26 million cubic metres of sand, silt and rock, is needed to secure
the Port?s future.
Dredging is expected to cost over $600 million but is also estimated to bring
an economic net benefit of $1.94 billion. Concerns have been raised about toxic
algal blooms and marine pests stirred up by the dredging.
Scientists at the annual Australian Marine Science Association Conference, to
be held in Melbourne, July 9-13 will be discussing an array of issues relating
to dredging and its consequences.
Dr Keith Hayes from the CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research in Hobart will describe models used to predict the potential effects of dredge plume related stresses on seagrass communities.
He will describe the consequences following prolonged and sustained increase in turbidity and the concomitant attenuation of light that occurs during dredge operations. He will also address the cause and effect relationship between turbidity and its impact on seagrass growth, and the net effect of seagrass on predatory fish.
Dr Kathryn McMahon, from the Coastal Marine Ecosystems Research Group at Edith Cowan University in WA, has looked at the effect of dredging on seagrass ecosystems ? their impact and recovery.
Dredging is regularly carried out in ports for routine maintenance and enhancement projects.
Dr McMahon argues that the direct impacts to the environment are generally well understood, however, predicting impacts from indirect effects such as light reduction from turbid plumes is challenging.
Her research examined the light reduction effects of dredging on a temperate Amphibolis griffithii seagrass ecosystem with 3 factors: duration (3,6,9 months); intensity (~92%, ~84% reduction); and timing (post-winter, post-summer) of light reduction. Biomass, morphological and physiological responses of seagrass to light reduction treatments and also following recovery (4,10 months) were measured. The seagrass response was dependent upon timing, duration and intensity of light reduction, with significant interactions between these factors. Greater than 3 months of light reduction resulted in more than 75% loss of leaf biomass from which there was no recovery. After 3 months of light reduction, up to 70% of leaf biomass was lost, and it took 10 months to return to control conditions. Amphibolis griffithii parameters that respond quickly to light reduction and may be useful as sub-lethal indicators during dredging operations include leaf biomass, leaf density, number of leaves per cluster and rhizome sugars.
In comparison to the above findings, Dr Harry Houridis, from Spooner, Daniel and Sinclair Knight Merz in Melbourne found little long term impact from maintenance dredging and water quality in Hanns Inlet, Western Port.
Maintenance dredging was undertaken at HMAS Cerberus, Hanns Inlet, Western
Port, Victoria between June and August 2006. Monitoring of turbidity, water
clarity and total suspended solids indicated that dredging had a very localised
impact on the water quality of Hanns Inlet with elevated turbidity and poor
water clarity most evident at the monitoring site closest to the dredge. Dredging
in the harbour had a local and transient impact on background water quality
within the Inlet, and no discernible impact on water quality outside the Inlet
in Western Port.
Climate Change Impacts on Australian Marine Life, New Data Revealed at Melbourne Conference
Compared to North America very little is known about how climate change will impact on our seas. Next week, some of Australia?s preeminent marine scientists will be coming to Melbourne (July 9-13) for the annual Australian Marine Science Association meeting. One of the main topics to be discussed will be the effect that climate change is having, and will have, on Australia?s crucial marine environments.
Dr Elvira Poloczanska from CSIRO?s Division of Marine and Atmospheric
Research in Tasmania, has used the Organisation?s climate model to show
how:
? oceanic warming
? an increase in oceanic stratification
? a strengthening of the East Australian Current
? increased ocean acidification
? a rise in sea-level
? alterations in cloud cover
? increased atmospheric ozone levels
? altered storm and rainfall regimes
? will impact on Australian marine life.
Simon Walker, a doctoral student from the School of Integrative Biology at
the University of Queensland, will discuss the future effects of climatic change,
including rising sea levels and increased storm severity.
On coral reefs, sessile species occupying inter-tidal habitats contribute significantly
to the overall biodiversity and ecosystem function of coral reef ecosystems.
Under predicted climate changes, it is expected that physical gradients in these
intertidal habitats will be altered, but it is unclear how communities will
respond to these changes.
The researchers examined how biodiversity in these areas would be affected by
one aspect of climatic change ? increased storm intensity ? through
experimental manipulations of the disturbance regime on One Tree Reef in the
southern Great Barrier Reef.
They monitored colonisation of undisturbed (secured) and disturbed (unsecured),
natural (coral) rubble plates over nine months. At the exposed sites disturbance
resulted in 71 % loss of species richness and 88 % loss in total coverage low
on the shore. Even at the sheltered location, there was significantly more species
present when disturbance was removed. Some species that were absent on natural
(unsecured) plates successfully colonised the undisturbed plates, indicating
that disturbance was restricting their distribution.
As physical disturbance regimes increase due to more intense storms and wave
action associated with global warming, this data predicts there will be a corresponding
decrease in the diversity of these sessile invertebrates.
This could have implications for the future health and productivity of coral reef ecosystems.
Dr John Church is an internationally recognized expert on climate change. Simon Walker can be contacted on 0404 065 840