WA Blueprint Priorities for Marine Research Under Review

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Western Australia’s Blueprint for Marine Science is undergoing a five-yearly review by the Western Australian Marine Science Institution to assess and update research priorities that may have changed under current economic and environmental forecasts.

The aim of the Blueprint is to support future decision making by providing evidence-based scientific support that recognises the needs of Western Australia’s marine industries, managers, regulators and the wider community.

First published in 2015, The Blueprint identified more than 100 sector-specific knowledge gaps through a comprehensive program of stakeholder engagement. The initial science priorities were also consistent with the science community led National Marine Science Plan.

CEO Dr Luke Twomey said, as custodians of the Blueprint, The Western Australian Marine Science Institution (WAMSI) will revisit the Blueprint to maintain an understanding of the ongoing marine research priorities in Western Australia.

“Over the past five years WAMSI and other organisations have made great inroads into meeting priorities listed in the 2015 Blueprint,” Dr Twomey said. “Most notably, Western Australia has come a long way toward developing the future of shared data platforms, including the development of the Index of Marine Surveys for Assessments (IMSA) portal. Now, given major disruptions to regional, national and global socio-political drivers, we expect to observe a shift in the priorities and focus across the different sectors.”

Over the coming weeks WAMSI will revisit stakeholders across the different marine sectors in WA to discuss and document whether the previously identified priorities are still valid or if they have changed.

“What we want to learn from industry, environment managers and regulators is, what has changed for them over the past five years, what marine research areas are important to them now, and how marine research can help improve confidence in the decisions they need to make about the shared marine environment,” Dr Twomey said.

The outcomes are expected to be released in a report by mid-2021.

To Bait or Not to Bait: Remote Underwater Video Surveys of Juvenile Fish

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A new study comparing the efficiency of baited and unbaited remote underwater stereo-video to survey juvenile fish populations has found no significant difference between the two methods.

Juvenile fish are a particularly important group to monitor and understand given the high social, economic, and ecological value placed on adult fish populations.

Driven by their need for shelter from predators and environmental stressors, juvenile fish are often found in habitats which are difficult to sample other than by diver surveys. In the Kimberley however, diver surveys are impractical given the dangerous tidal conditions and the presence of crocodiles. Divers surveys have also been linked with a change in fish behaviour.

As part of the Western Australian Marine Science Institution’s (WAMSI) Kimberley Marine Research Program, a team of scientists from The University of Western Australia (UWA), The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and the Kimberley Marine Research Station compared the use of baited and unbaited remote underwater stereo video systems (BRUVS and RUVS). The study took place in the Iwany (Sunday) Islands group with guidance from the Bardi Jawi Rangers and Traditional Owners.

Stereo-RUVS use two cameras on a frame that is lowered onto the seabed to record fish movement. The two cameras enable lengths and distance measurements to be made using specialised software.

Lead author UWA PhD candidate Camilla Piggott said the results, published in the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology suggest both methods can effectively produce the same result.

‘’What we found was that there was no difference in the ability of stereo-BRUV or stereo-RUV to quantify the relative total abundance, species richness, or assemblage composition of juvenile fish,” Camilla said.

Sixty Stereo-RUVs and 60 Stereo-BRUVs samples were taken across four shallow-water (1-6 metre) coral, mangrove, macroalgae, and seagrass habitats to contrast the effect of the presence or absence of bait, deployment period, in-water visibility and tidally driven water speed.

“We found that a deployment period of 10 minutes for Stereo-BRUVs and 15 minutes for Stereo-RUVs was optimum for sampling the juvenile fish assemblage across all four contrasting habitats,” Camilla explained. “Since no statistical significance was observed between 10 and 15 minutes, we recommend that Stereo-RUVs deployed for 15 minutes during tidal slack water conditions are an optimum way to provide consistent results for comparisons of juvenile fish assemblages across the habitats studied in this region.”

Dr James Gilmour and Camilla Piggott deploy a Remote Underwater Video System at the Iwany (Sunday) Island group in the western Kimberley

Dr James Gilmour and Camilla Piggott deploy a Remote Underwater Video System at the Iwany (Sunday) Island group in the western Kimberley (Photo: AIMS)

 

Citation: Piggott CVH, Depczynski M, Gagliano M, Langlois TJ (2020) Remote video methods for studying juvenile fish populations in challenging environments. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, doi.org/10.1016/j.jembe.2020.151454

The $30 million Kimberley Marine Research Program was funded through major investment supported by $12 million from the Western Australian government co-invested by the WAMSI partners and supported by the Traditional Owners of the Kimberley.

Phytoplankton Proves its Carbon Capture Capability in Extreme Environments

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A new study has found that phytoplankton, the microalgal powerhouse plants of the sea, are able to change their physiology and continue to uptake and store carbon despite the extreme tidal movement and dynamic light conditions in the Kimberley.

If there’s one thing that the Kimberley marine environment can teach us, it’s the best way to live in an extreme environment, according to CSIRO’s James McLaughlin, lead author of the latest paper on Phytoplankton Light Acclimation to Periodic Turbulent Mixing Along a Tidally Dominated Tropical Coastline published in JGR Oceans.    

The study in King Sound, which is a 100‐kilometre‐long, semi-enclosed embayment opening to the Indian Ocean, was conducted by researchers from CSIRO and The University of Western Australia as part of the Western Australian Marine Science Institution’s (WAMSI) Kimberley Marine Research Program.

It reveals that despite low nutrients and decreased water clarity in areas of the Sound, phytoplankton were able to photosynthesise as if it were in a high light exposure environment. On the adjacent shelf however, the roles reversed, phytoplankton migrate deeper and acclimatise their photosynthetic strategy to a lower light environment, enabling them to reach available nutrients at depth.

“King Sound experiences very large variations in light over short time scales, and we found that the phytoplankton community there was dominated by diatoms, a microalgae that can rapidly adjust pigment within the cell to acclimate to water column light conditions,” James McLaughlin said.

“What this does is allow higher maximum photosynthetic rates to be attained by the phytoplankton which are trying to live in a region with extreme tides, in an environment that is constantly changing from deeper turbid and dark waters to shallow more light exposed ones,” James said.

Tides help to redistribute phytoplankton and nutrients and this in turn influences their population and community structure within marine ecosystems. It is important to better understand the impact of tidal mixing on the ability of phytoplankton to capture and store atmospheric carbon dioxide in these dynamic coastal areas.

 

The $30 million Kimberley Marine Research Program was funded through major investment supported by $12 million from the Western Australian government co-invested by the WAMSI partners and supported by the Traditional Owners of the Kimberley.