Bird diets study to provide insight into wetlands health
River Release | 9 News Perth
New life is being breathed into Perth’s waterways with 400 thousand juvenile prawns being released into the Canning River. The restocking program has been running for the past four years, rejuvenating a dying hobby and getting families back on the water.
Government Media Statement: Four millionth prawn for Swan and Canning rivers
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Science for restoring and enhancing estuary values – Vasse Wonnerup
Report from the National Estuaries Network Science Forum on Barrier Estuaries
The Department of Water, Water Science Branch and Busselton office together with Geocatch, hosted the National Estuaries Network Science Forum on Barrier Estuaries with special focus on the Vasse Wonnerup System (VWWS) – a wetland of international significance (Ramsar, 1990).
Around 60 estuary managers, researchers and interested community members met in Busselton to exchange information about the Vasse Strategy, science needs for estuary management and the current state of the VWWS.
Opening comments highlighted that aligned and collaborative sciences, supported by robust baseline level data are essential for effective decision-making.
Implementing the Vasse Strategy includes a restructure of governance arrangements, development of a business case to fund the strategy, reviewing the drainage infrastructure and continued catchment management interventions.
The history of flow and drainage modifications designed to protect Busselton from flooding were also shown to have contributed to the eutrophic conditions in the lower rivers and estuaries.
Advances in hydrological modelling and smarter engineering solutions are being investigated to achieve essential flood protection as well as better water quality by increased dilution of lowland river flows, helping to reduce nutrient concentrations and the undesirable expression of nuisance algal blooms and fish kills.
Early stage research projects, part of the South West Catchment Council Research Node for the Vasse Wonnerup Wetlands will explore quantitative food web structure, nutrient sources and sinks and socio-economic factors.
The connection with and potential impacts on the receiving water body – Geographe Bay were also explored. Geographe Bay has one of the largest seagrass meadows on the WA coast. A nation-wide risk assessment for seagrass meadows indicated that climate-driven temperature increase poses the greatest threat to South West seagrass integrity and that this is a greater threat than estuarine water nutrient discharge to Geographe Bay due to the drying climate pattern.
The feedback from members of the National Estuaries Network was that all of the elements needed for successful restoration appear to be in place but the integrated and thoughtful synthesis of all actions, progress and estuary health status updates would greatly assist communication between all stakeholders and sustain the momentum of support that has emerged.
Community interest is high, there has been 18 years of GeoCatch activity in catchment restoration and some highly visible media campaigns for behaviour change such as “Save the Crabs and Eat Them”. Community members appreciated the opportunity to engage with estuary managers and researchers.
Vasse Wonnerup System and adjacent Geographe Bay are incredible natural assets; with the strong community interest, there are opportunities to greatly enhance eco-tourism activities around this wetland benefiting the economy, society and environment.
We thank all the people who participated in this event. The Abstract booklet includes the speakers and their contact information.
National Estuaries Science Forum on Barrier Estuaries (Busselton)
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Marine mapping for a North Kimberley Marine Park
Scientists on a mission to better understand the ecological biodiversity that thrives on the ocean floor in Australia’s remote northwest are about to head out on the fourth of five field trips, this time to uncover what lives in the area of the proposed North Kimberley Marine Park.
The results will be added to the data collected from the recent field trip aboard RV Solander to the islands of the Bonaparte Archipelago to investigate the coral reefs, sponges and other marine life inhabiting this remote area of the Kimberley.
The Solander voyages include researchers from AIMS, the Western Australian Museum, CSIRO and Curtin University.
The surveys focus on sampling in southern, central and northern sections of the Greater Kimberley proposed Marine Park. Researchers map the sea floor using multi-beam sonar technology, examine the distribution of habitats using towed video, make measurements of the water conditions (light penetration levels; temperature; salinity levels) and tidal ranges, and collect representative samples of the benthic flora and fauna using an epibenthic sled.
Video of sponge gardens at Nick’s Rock.
The current ship based surveys have a focus on the deeper areas, from around 10m below low tide, where little information is available from previous Kimberley studies.
The project anticipates that complimentary work will also be conducted to build on existing information of nearshore shallow and intertidal habitats.
Ultimately all available data will be drawn together to provide an overview of the large scale trends in habitats along the Kimberley and highlight the principle factors determining the presence or absence of key biota.
The locations for investigation have been selected with the WA marine park initiatives in mind, in particular Lalang-garram/Camden Sound Marine Park and the proposed North Kimberley Marine Park in the Cape Bougainville-Cape Londonderry region.
Scientists on the voyage collect benthic specimens to characterise the marine biodiversity of the area and create a reference collection at the WA Museum. This sampling and identification process will help the scientists determine what species of animals and plants occur there and what types of habitats each species is associated with.
What does a coral reef sound like?
“The Kimberley is an increasingly active, multiple-use marine region, with a growing need for accessible environmental and socio-economic information,” WAMSI Project leader, Dr Andrew Heyward (AIMS) said. “These are voyages of discovery, which is inherently exciting for the scientists. We expect the project will reveal much about life on the seabed in this region and make a useful contribution to planning and management.”
“The Kimberley region has a vast array of habitat types with a stunning array of biodiversity, much of which has not been studied or collected before,” CSIRO scientist Dr John Keesing said. “The macro tidal range and working in previously unchartered waters makes surveys of this type particularly challenging, but also exciting and rewarding in terms of the scientific discoveries waiting to be made.”
Work is now underway on the analysis of species assemblages, biomass and abundance in relation to habitat types encountered during the surveys.
Related Links:
Marji Puotinen (AIMS) captured the daily highlights of the voyage on the Northwest Atlas blog http://blog.northwestatlas.org/category/expedition-to-the-kimberly-coast/
The $30 million Kimberley Marine Research Program is funded through major investment supported by $12 million from the Western Australian government’s Kimberley Science and Conservation Strategy co-invested by the WAMSI partners and supported by the Traditional Owners of the Kimberley.
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Providing an evidence base to support decommissioning of offshore infrastructure
When an oil and gas project completes, the infrastructure that was installed on the seafloor needs to be managed properly. Decommissioning this infrastructure is very expensive, but companies do it to leave the site in good order as the company moves on.
There are many strategies that can be employed to decommission offshore infrastructure from removal of all infrastructure, through to minimal removal required to make safe and environmentally acceptable.
However, different stakeholders have different views on how far decommissioning should go. Oil and gas companies want to meet community expectations while minimising costs, recreational fishers like infrastructure to be left as it creates new environments and can enhance fish stocks, some commercial fishers want it removed as it can damage their fishing equipment and environmental groups want to be absolutely sure the environment is protected.
”Unfortunately we don’t have a clear and broadly accepted understanding of what the effects of different decommissioning strategies are in our Western Australian marine environment,” CEO of the Western Australian Fishing Industry Council John Harrison said. “This means everyone reverts to their own perspectives and opinions and can lead to conflict between sectors, to difficulties in regulation and policy, and in companies adopting precautionary strategies that may not be the most effective. So we want to work together to come up with a shared position we can all agree with.”
At the Premier of Western Australia’s Marine Science Round-table meetings, senior representatives of the interested sectors suggested that a collaborative project would make business sense to all parties to better inform regulatory policy and operational management of decommissioning.
“The Blueprint Initiative has been an excellent process to allow the different sectors that share the ocean to work together on common issues,” Bruce Lake Chairman of APPEA and a member of the round-table said. “Decommissioning is clearly one of those issues that is imminent and is also important to many sectors so it’s a great exemplar project for this collaboration with real value to all. APPEA is pleased to be able to support this multi-sector approach and particularly to have WAMSI run the project to ensure the outputs are genuinely independent.”
APPEA, RecFishWest, Western Australian Fishing Industry Council, National Energy and Resources Australia, along with NOPSEMA, the Office of the EPA, and Department of Mines and Petroleum and Department of Fisheries are supporting and advising the independent WAMSI project.
“We are also discussing with some other key stakeholder groups to ensure proper representation across the different views,” Patrick Seares CEO said.
The six month project is focussed on ensuring all stakeholders are involved in the conversation about decommissioning through workshops and other forums to understand and document everyone’s issues. A review of global knowledge and experiences against those questions will then be completed before a consultative approach to deciding what is reasonable to adopt right now, and what are the knowledge gaps we need to do further work in.
“The projects follows in line with the approach tested successfully during the establishment of the WAMSI Dredging Node,” Patrick Seares said. “We will take the time to properly bed down the actual, instead of perceived, questions that need answering before planning a science program. This ensures that science, if required, is targeted and leads directly to the development of guidance that addresses management priorities.”
Kimberley dolphins vulnerable to human activity.
Dolphins in Western Australia’s Kimberley are heavily reliant on their specific habitats and “quite vulnerable” to human activity, researchers have said.
The researchers published the findings of a four-year study which provides the first estimates of the abundance of three shallow, inshore species of dolphin — the Australian snubfin, the Australian humpback and the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin.
The Murdoch University team travelled to five remote locations in the Kimberley to collect data, counting dolphins and mapping the sightings.
They focused mostly on the West Kimberley, visiting Roebuck Bay, Beagle Bay, Cygnet Bay and Cone Bay, but also took in the Inner Cambridge Gulf in the region’s east.
“The motivation for this research was that these animals, from what we know elsewhere in Australia, tend to occur in quite small populations that really depend on the near-shore environment,” lead researcher Alexander Brown said.
ABC TV News story by reporter Natalie Jones
“So that makes them quite vulnerable to human activity that occurs in these habitats.
“Particularly in the Kimberley region, we really had no idea of how many of these species were out there and what key areas there might be.”
The researchers found there was a high degree of population variance between the sites.
“We could go just 100 kilometres up the coast and we’d see quite a change in the dominance of a species over another,” Mr Brown said.
He found that snubfin dolphins were most abundant at Roebuck Bay, and bottlenose dolphins were most abundant at Beagle Bay on the west side of the Dampier Peninsula.
Boosting dolphin conservation
Mr Brown said the team thought each species favoured some habitats over others, and said there may also be some competition between species.
“Without this abundance of data it makes it very difficult to assess the conservation status of the species, to determine if they should qualify as threatened species or otherwise, and it’s very difficult to determine appropriate conservation and management measures,” he said.
Snubfin and humpback dolphins are unique to the waters off northern Australia and Southern New Guinea, but little is known about the species in the tropical north.
The research comes as the State and Federal Governments plan and gazette several marine parks across the Kimberley coast.
Mr Brown — a Murdoch University Cetacean Research Unit (MUCRU) PhD student who partnered with Lars Bejder, Kenneth Pollock and Simon Allen on the study — said his team’s work could help manage those areas.
Snubfin dolphins swimming off the Kimberley coast.
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| Snubfin dolphins (Jenny Smith, MUCRU) |
He also warned the three species of dolphin would be particularly vulnerable to any new development.
“If any coastal development or potentially threatening activity is likely to take place, site-specific surveys need to be conducted in order to ascertain if the area’s of particular importance for any one or all three of these species,” he said.
“We also really recommend building upon these abundance estimates in the future by establishing more long-term monitoring programs, in order to determine if populations are stable, increasing or in decline.”
Existing threats to dolphins remain largely unknown, as the study surveyed just six per cent of the Kimberley’s coastline.
The MUCRU research was funded by the Federal Government’s Australian Marine Mammal Centre, WWF Australia and the Western Australian Marine Science Institution’s Kimberley Marine Research Program.
Related Links:
ABC http://ow.ly/YA91g
http://mucru.org/new-publication-inshore-dolphins/
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmars.2016.00004/full
The $30 million Kimberley Marine Research Program is funded through major investment supported by $12 million from the Western Australian government’s Kimberley Science and Conservation Strategy co-invested by the WAMSI partners and supported by the Traditional Owners of the Kimberley.
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Mapping public values and preferences for Marine Protected Areas
One of the first studies to examine social values to be considered in management planning for Marine Protected Areas has highlighted the similarity and diversity among individuals when weighing the importance of environmental, economic, and social interests for proposed marine reserves in the Kimberley region.
The results of the WAMSI-supported study was recently published in Applied Geography. The study used an internet-based mapping method called public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) and volunteered geographic information (VGI) to collect spatial information from a broad cross-section of the general public (non-experts). Individuals were invited to identify and map place values (for example, scenic and recreation values) and management preferences (for example, places that should receive greater environmental protection or places that are acceptable for resource development). Both residents and non-residents of the Kimberley region were invited to map their values and preferences with over 500 individuals participating.
Participants were classified into different “stakeholder” groups based on who they identify with, their future interests in the region, and their personal preferences for economic development versus environmental protection. For example, stakeholder groups included residents, visitors, Aboriginal Traditional Owners, oil/gas industry, commercial fishers, tourism operators, government, and non-government organizations.
The results showed that people mapped values and preferences generally consistent with their stakeholder identity. For example, NGOs mapped more conservation preferences while oil/gas stakeholders mapped more oil/gas development preferences in the region. However, conservation-related values and preferences dominated the mapped results in all proposed marine reserves.
Lead author Professor Greg Brown from the University of Queensland said the results show the importance of engaging broad social interests in spatial mapping when developing management plans and policies for Marine Protected Areas.
“There is an assumption that conservation and development stakeholder interests will disagree on how to manage the marine environment,”Professor Brown said. “But place-based mapping allows stakeholders to identify specific areas of agreement/disagreement. Our participatory mapping results showed consensus for conservation in the five MPA areas in the study region leading to win-win outcomes.”
The study demonstrates that while differences in stakeholder interests are real and most be accounted for in MPA planning and management, public participatory processes that include spatial mapping of values and preferences can find the “middle-ground” between government-led and community-based approaches that result in cost-effective conservation outcomes.
The following website shows the distribution of the more than 27,000 values and preferences mapped in the Kimberley region by study participants: www.landscapemap2.org/kimberley/mapviewer.php
Published Article: Brown G, Strickland-Munro J, Kobryn H, Moore S (Dec 2015) Stakeholder analysis for marine conservation planning using public participation GIS Applied Geography doi:10.1016/j.apgeog.2015.12.004
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| Kimberley marine parks (current and proposed) (Source: Geoscience Australia 2014, Department of Parks and Wildlife). |
The $30 million Kimberley Marine Research Program is funded through major investment supported by $12 million from the Western Australian government’s Kimberley Science and Conservation Strategy co-invested by the WAMSI partners and supported by the Traditional Owners of the Kimberley.
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