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MARINE Life August September 2014 ISSUE 32 1 Features and Creatures Our Goal To educate, inform, have fun and share our enjoyment of the marine world with likeminded MPAs Saving Corals and Fish 3 & 8, 10 people. Cities on the sea 4 CSIRO job cuts 4 The Crew Latest Antarctic research 5 Michael Jacques, Editor Shark Culls 7 NT Correspondent – Grant Treloar SA Correspondent – Peter Day Floating LNG 7 WA Correspondent – Mike Lee Monster Sharks & Giant Clams 8 Disclaimer: The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily the views of the editorial staff or associates of this Seagrass Regeneration 8 publication. We make no promise that any of this will make Sediments Damage the Reef 9 sense. Loss of Seabirds in the Hunter 11 Cover photo, Fiddler Ray, Port Phillip Bay, Victoria by Phil Watson Bacteria and Coral 12 Drupella snails are a pest 13 Stromatolites in WA 14 Blockade runner wrecks in the NT 16 \ Naturalist Clive Lord and his voyages 19 We are now part of the wonderful world of Facebook! Check us out, Port Davey by seaplane 21 stalk our updates, and ‘like’ our Myora, Moreton Bay Heritage 22 page to fuel our insatiable egos. Rays and skates 28 Contact us: [email protected] 2 National News MPAs help replenish fish stocks From despair to repair: coral reefs can be saved James Cook University professors have said fish larvae showed they used their senses to find their way home. Using smell and hearing 20 Reef biologists over a per cent of these actively swimming fish larvae can return to their certain age are starting point compared to less than two per cent for passively drifting haunted by memories coral larvae. Many more fish larvae can end up on other reefs nearby of what places like and replenish fish stocks in fished areas. Caribbean reefs once “This means that the high larvae numbers from marine protected areas looked like. help resupply fish to fished reefs outside marine protected areas.” In 1972, marine biologist Professor Wolanski explained that after hatching, fish larvae cannot Sylvia Earle wrote that swim and are dispersed by ocean currents. However, when the larvae Caribbean coral reefs are, have grown a dorsal bone, they can swim. They swim horizontally using “almost devoid of the smell cue towards home, that is, the reef where they were spawned. conspicuous The fish larvae can also hear. If lost at sea and they come within plants.” Today reefs are hearing distance – one to two kilometres – of another reef, they can overgrown by seaweed. Most Caribbean coral reefs will disappear in 2 or swim to it. This is how MPAs help replenish fish in depleted areas. 3 decades if we don’t restore the grazers that defend the corals from seaweed. A new report shows a more than a 50 percent decline in living A large number of corals throughout the Caribbean over the past half century. coral reef fish larvae from an While it is true that climate change poses an enormous risk for the MPA are dispersed future because of coral bleaching and more acid oceans, the fact is reefs away by oceanic protected from overfishing and excessive coastal development and currents, but pollution are more resilient to these stresses. “Even if we could these larvae can somehow make climate change disappear tomorrow, these reefs would recruit in large continue their decline, said Jeremy Jackson. Many people say that numbers to reefs climate change has already doomed coral reefs but the report shows outside of the that loss of parrotfishes and other grazers has been far more important MPAs. MPAs help than climate change for Caribbean reef destruction so far. replenish fish A new report confirms that the healthiest Caribbean coral reefs have stocks in fished vigorous populations of grazing parrotfish. Llive coral cover is more areas.” than double or triple the average coral cover. All of these places prevent the fishing of parrotfish.A brief breakdown in these protections resulted in an immediate decline in the health of Bonaire’s reefs, which triggered a quick restitution of protections. Some countries are already taking new positive action. Barbuda is moving to ban all catches of parrotfish and grazing sea urchins while also planning to set aside one third of their coastal waters as marine reserves. 3 Cities on the sea CSIRO cuts jobs CSIRO announced plans to cut up to 500 jobs, A US organisation is hoping after having its budget to create cities which float slashed by $115 million on the ocean over four years. The The Seasteading Institute says CSIRO has already it hopes the floating suffered many budget microcountries producing their cutbacks over the years. own food. Communication director Joe The CSIRO Staff Association Quirk says "When you consider said scientists will account that nearly half the world's for 28 of 31 job cuts due to happen now. The cut researchers cover surface is a blank slate, areas such as ocean climate processes and climate modelling, as well as unclaimed by existing biodiversity. Most of the jobs will be lost in Tasmania and Victoria. governments, you see the potential in creating a thousand About 18 research positions in marine and atmospheric research will be start-up governments in the cut from Hobart, while eight positions will be cut at CSIRO’s Aspendale sea," he said. Laboratory in Melbourne. "…we don't think 193 national The pace of job losses is expected to accelerate. One-off funding of $32 governments represent the million, to finance redundancies, must be used by the end of the month. range of ideas that 7 billion Other programs likely to get cut cover geothermal energy, liquid fuels, creative people have produced. carbon capture and storage, and climate change. CSIRO’s research on The first city, made up of modular platforms, could be built by 2020 and coal seam gas is likely to increase. house about 225 people. Mr Quirk says they are looking for a nation to Roger Dargaville, of the University of Melbourne speculates that the host the city in its shallow territorial waters and provide it with changes mean the CSIRO have a deliberate strategy of investing in substantial political autonomy [what a great way for a tax break, or to programs that are likely to impress the government and head off any be a haven for the mafia- Ed]. more future cuts. “It may just be holding up a mirror to the federal “…we'll set an example and show people that seasteads can be of government’s apparent reluctance to engage on climate change” benefit to the world," he said. 4 Antarctic and Southern Oceans News Large changes ahead for Antarctic marine ecosystems Tracking Antarctic & Southern Ocean hotspots An international group of Satellite tracking of Southern Ocean experts six seal and seabird has found that changes in species in the East Antarctic and Southern Antarctic sector of Ocean habitats will change the Southern Ocean the structure and function has identified six of marine food webs. hotspots of important marine habitat. While the ultimate Two decades of satellite consequences of climate- tracking (‘telemetry’) related changes on Antarctic data had been collected marine ecosystems are not by tagged Adélie and well understood, they are emperor penguins, expected to cause shifts in light-mantled albatross, species’ ranges and may Antarctic fur seals, result in reduced biodiversity southern elephant seals and novel changes in the and Weddell seals. structure and function of The preferred habitat of each species was identified by applying marine food webs. statistical modelling methods to the observed tracks. The results were “For Antarctic krill and finfish, consistent with previous studies which have shown, for example, that which can move large both Adélie and emperor penguins prefer habitat close to their breeding distances, the breadth of their colonies during the chick-rearing period. Male and female southern range will depend on how well elephant seals, in contrast, disperse widely from their colonies after they tolerate warming oceans and changes to productivity.” The breeding and concentrate on shallow parts of the continental shelf and Antarctic Division’s Dr Constable said. areas of winter food abundance. The study also found that ocean acidification will affect krill reproduction “Areas of overlap were all located in the southern part of the study and the ability of some marine organisms to produce shells and other region, generally over the Antarctic shelf and waters immediately to its hard, protective structures. While marine mammals and birds may need north, excluding deep, open oceanic areas,” Dr Raymond said. to find alternative locations for food, resulting in longer or more “Female Weddell seals and to a lesser extent emperor penguins were complex foraging trips for those bound to breeding colonies. most strongly associated with near-coast areas. Light-mantled albatrosses preferred offshore areas, closer to their subantarctic breeding islands. The remaining species showed more uniform distributions.” 5 WA New pointers were patrolling WA beaches routinely in numbers, you might have expected a few to have been caught by now. The interesting If at first you don’t succeed, just spend more question is why not? If they are inshore it seems to be in response to an The WA Government wants to unknown intermittent stimulus. bait almost 1,000 sharks over Culling hasn't REALLY done anything to lessen the risk of attack in WA, the next three years. it’s just falsely made some of us feel safer. Isn't it right to call that a The Government has applied for failed approach? Wouldn’t it be better to expend our effort on answering Commonwealth approval to set a bigger question, ‘Why were there so many attacks in recent years?’ up 72 baited drum lines until p.s.