research – Page 9 – ANGFA Queensland

Biodiversity study in Kakadu’s wetlands

Australian native freshwater species, research, threatened species, waterways/wetlands

Feb 162014

The group sampling estuarine fish in the South Alligator River is using a variety of netting and trapping techniques to document patterns in fish size and abundance, and how this varies between the wet and dry season in response to changes in flow and habitat.

Kakadu wetlands.

“It’s fascinating how different the fish communities are on this trip compared to a wet season sampling trip earlier in the year. The group has collected several species which weren’t around during the wet, and the size and abundance of various species has also changed.

Another group is surveying Kakadu’s rivers to see how important it is as a habitat for the threatened freshwater sawfish and other estuarine species including the speartooth shark and the northern river shark.

“This kind of work is not possible without effective collaboration,” Professor Bunn said.

“Parks Australia and traditional owners are working closely with the team, which comprises researchers from Charles Darwin University, Griffith University, the University of Western Australia, NT Fisheries, the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory and CSIRO.”

The knowledge gained from this project will be used to assess potential effects on northern Australia’s aquatic biodiversity caused by climate change, sea level rise and other threats.

It will also help inform management strategies to minimise the impact of these threats.

Research sheds light on Kimberley fish status

Australian native freshwater species, government, research, threatened species, waterways/wetlands

Feb 162014

Original story by Michelle Wheeler, ScienceNetwork Western Australia

A MELBOURNE-based PhD student is assessing the conservation risk for freshwater fish in the Kimberley in the belief many are in danger of extinction but are not listed as threatened.

This Prince Regent Hardyhead (Craeterocephalus lentiginosus) is also endemic to the Kimberley region. Photo: M. Le Feuvre/J. Shelley

University of Melbourne PhD student Matthew Le Feuvre says 50 of Australia’s 250-odd freshwater fish species live in the Kimberley and about 18 are only found in the region.

He says about 20 per cent of the country’s freshwater fish are listed as threatened by the Commonwealth Government but none of those are from the Kimberley.

Mr Le Feuvre has spent six months in the Kimberley studying freshwater fish in the last year and a half, focusing on the northern and eastern parts of the region and predominantly between the Ord and Prince Regent rivers.

The project has mainly surveyed rivers with road access but the research team has also used a helicopter to fly into more remote areas.

Some of the rivers have only been surveyed once, in the 1970s.

Mr Le Feuvre says “very, very little” is known about freshwater fish species endemic to the Kimberley.

He points to the Mitchell gudgeon, a fish found only within 10km of river either side of the Mitchell Falls, as an example of a species at risk.

“If there was development in that region or rainfall levels changed with climate change and those sorts of processes it might mean that species could get wiped out very easily,” Mr Le Feuvre says.

“Then there are other species that are found in single river systems such as the long-nose sooty grunter, which appears to be an entirely piscivorous fish, so it just eats other fish.”

Mr Le Feuvre says the Kimberley is an incredibly biodiverse part of Australia and we have a “unique opportunity” to study it before any major development happens.

As well as collecting data about the distribution and abundance of freshwater species, Mr Le Feuvre is studying the fishes’ diet, life history traits such as growth rate, age of reproduction and longevity and their ability to respond to climate change.

He is using a “triple jeopardy” hypothesis to determine the risk of extinction.

This means a species is considered to be at the greatest risk if it is range-restricted, is not very abundant where it is found and has specialised dietary, habitat, physiology or reproductive requirements.

“With those three factors against them they may be at incredibly high risk of extinction,” Mr Le Feuvre says.

“It makes intuitive sense but very few people have managed to actually empirically test that.”

UniDive investigates changes to local reefs

community, research, waterways/wetlands

Feb 132014

Media release from UQ News

Volunteer divers from The University of Queensland’s Underwater Club have began their descent on the North Stradbroke Island Point Lookout dive sites, to measure changes in plant and animal life over the past 13 years.

Uni Dive members will assess the reef until late October.

The UniDive PLEA (Point Lookout Ecological Assessment) project aims to provide an assessment of Shag Rock, Flat Rock and Manta Bombie and to compare the findings against a 2001 study of the same sites.

UniDive member Lachlan Pollard said between 50 and 70 divers would be involved in the study, running until the end of October.

“Many considerations have been made in the development of the underwater study, ensuring flora and fauna are correctly compared over the 13-year period,” he said.

Mr Pollard said there had been a range of changes since the 2001 study.

“There has been an increase in marine activities such as diving and fishing, Flat Rock has been listed as a protected zone, and boat moorings have been put in place to reduce anchor damage,” he said.

“And South East Queensland’s population has grown, and we have had large scale weather events such as the 2011 Queensland floods.”

Repeating data-collection techniques used in the original UniDive study, the divers will make 400 dives during summer, autumn, winter and spring.

The collected data will be analysed and the results will be presented to the local community, researchers, management and monitoring agencies at the end of 2014.

Scientific divers will provide training to volunteer club members from UQ’s School of Geography, Veterinarian Science and Marine Science.

Training modules will include fish, invertebrates, coral, substrate and impacts identification, habitat mapping and general surveying techniques.

The training will allow the divers to compare coral and fish life within a defined area against the 2001 study.

Project PLEA has been made possible by a Redland City Council Community grant of $9500 and support from businesses, conservation groups and University of Queensland research groups.

UQ Research Fellow and Project Organiser Dr Chris Roelfsema can be contacted on 0400207401 for further information.

View previous project results by UniDive volunteers here.

Australian Jellyfish, Crambione cookii, Filmed for the First Time

aquarium, Interest, research

Feb 102014

Original story by Bec Crew, Scientific American

It’s jellyfish mania in Australia right now, thanks to our snotastic new friend, whose discovery on a Tasmanian beach was announced just last week. While Captain Vom waits patiently for his new official name, we’ve got time to welcome another Australian jellyfish species into the spotlight, and this one’s been waiting more than a century for its fifteen minutes.

Crambione cookii with its fish friends. Photo: Puk Scivyer

Meet Crambione cookii: a species that was discovered in the 1890s off the coast of Cookstown in Queensland and then not seen again for more than a hundred years. Well, that was how the story went, so when Puk Scivyer from Underwater World on the [~~Gold~~] Sunshine Coast photographed a dead specimen in 1999, she knew she was on to something pretty special. Especially since there were no photographs of the species on record – just a single sketch from the original discovery.

She sent the photograph to CSIRO marine biologist and Australia’s foremost authority on everything jellies, Lisa-Anne Gershwin, and in 2010, Gershwin published the discovery. The first confirmed sighting of the species in more than 100 years.

C. cookii is about 50 cm across the dome and about that long vertically. It’s got a light, pinkish hue, and a mass of thick, frilly tentacles. “It looks like a cauliflower with legs,” says Scivyer.

Things got spooky when late last year, Scivyer picked up another C. cookii, and this time, she’d caught a live one. “We were out on our boat, releasing turtles on that particular day, when I saw a rather large jelly in the water that didn’t look like the ones we normally encounter. We were in the process of setting up a jellyfish exhibit, so maybe our eyes were open a bit more than usual,” says Sciyver.

She sent Gershwin some footage of her find. “She said, ‘I think this is Crambione cookii. What do you think?’ And I looked at it and went, ‘Oh my God. You’ve got to be kidding. What are the odds? Because at that time we thought that it was an incredibly, incredibly rare species, and the only two sightings in 100 years were by the same person.”

Coincidence? Kind of, but only in the sense that Scivyer was the one qualified person to come across the species twice in over a century. It turns out that plenty of people had seen the species since its original discovery, and sure enough, once they knew it was special, the photographs started to pour in.

“It was pretty exciting. It’s just that it escaped the scientific community’s eyes for 100 years, but now that it’s been seen, members of the public have been contacting us with pictures,” says Scivyer. “So it’s not like it’s the last single jelly in the world, it’s just that nobody had really been in a position to find it when they knew that it was something unusual. They’re not rare, it’s more that they’re rarely encountered.”

When Scivyer pulled C. cookii out of the ocean, she noticed that nine fish seemed to be living amongst its tentacles. She scooped them up and they were housed together in a special jelly tank at Underwater World. And then, as if from nowhere, fish emerged from all over the place.

Crambione cookii in its Underwater World tank. Photo: Puk Scivyer.

“It was just a weirdest thing,” says Gershwin. “When [Scivyer] caught the specimen and let it go in the aquarium, I think it originally had nine fish with it. She sent me video with the nine fish and she was so excited. And then the next day she sent me more video and it’s got 25 or 30 fish. And then the next day she sent me more video and it’s got like 50 fish. It was unbelievable.”

“That’s probably what we found most interesting about him,” says Scivyer. “This single jelly had a population of 76 fish and several crustaceans living with him. The fish were actually nestling the jelly. Up until now it’s always been thought that they didn’t make contact with the jelly to avoid being stung, but from everything we’ve seen, they actually physically nestle in it, and they’re not the species of fish that would normally be known to do that, like clown fish with anemones. But these were trevally, [a species] never known to [associate so closely with jellies].”

Scivyer counted at least three different species of fish that were living with the jellyfish. She thinks they might have been feeding on the parasitic crustaceans that had attached themselves to its tentacles.

While it’s clear from the number of sightings by members of the public thatCrambione cookii is not rare, and possibly not even particularly uncommon, figuring out its population density and range is a particularly difficult task.

“With most jellyfish blooms, it comes and goes, sometimes within 24 hours. You can never quite pick when they’re going to happen,” says Scivyer. “We’re kind of getting an indication that it’s this time of the year [December], because it’s coming into our summer period, and we haven’t had any pictures from in the middle of winter. But that could be because people are out of the water when it’s rather cold. We’re also getting pictures distributed up the east coast of Australia. It’s a rather extensive range compared to what we thought originally.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq8hNS9dWIE

And finally, the million-dollar question – just how powerful is that sting?

“I would say moderate,” says Scivyer. “I haven’t physically made contact with the tentacles, but I did happen to touch the water that he’s been in, and it feels like a decent whack on the hand. You can definitely feel it in the water. It’s quite common for jellyfish, a lot of people when they’re in the water, they get the little stingy bits on them, quite often they’re just the stinging cells of the jellyfish.”

“Oh it stings. It hurts,” says Gershwin. “It’s not life threatening or anything like that. But it will get your attention. I think maybe it’s kind of like a Lion’s Mane or a Snotty, so it’s pretty zappy, but then it goes away. It makes you wonder, certainly it must be stinging these fish, but then to have the fish sheltering inside it, you’ve got to sort to say, well no, it can’t possibly be stinging the fish, or they’d be dead.”

Unfortunately the jellyfish didn’t last too long in captivity, but judging from the size of it – the original specimen from the 1980s was just 10 cm across the dome – it was probably fairly old when it was picked up. It now resides in the Queensland Museum as a specimen for future studies.

I’d just like to point out that the Daily Mail called Crambione cookii “deadly”, “incredibly rare”, and said that “Ms Scivyer thinks it is unlikely that any more will be found”. Gizmodo called it “deadly” too. Guys, come on. Thanks for ruining itsWikipedia page.

Recreational fishers win right to take from protected green zones

community, fisheries, government, research, waterways/wetlands

Feb 032014

Original story by Brian Williams, Sunday Mail

AMATEUR fishers have pledged to fight for as many green zones as possible to be opened to fishing after getting the go ahead from the State Government.

The move has been heavily criticised by University of Queensland ecologist and laureate fellow Hugh Possingham, who said research shows that green zones produced more and larger fish.

Sunfish chief executive Judy Lynne said it was not clear how much access would be sought but she had already received about 20 submissions – and the Mirapool green zone on Moreton Island was top of the list.

Green zones are the marine equivalent of national parks.

She said north Queensland and Great Sandy Marine Park fishers at Hervey Bay also opposed green zones in their areas.

National Parks Minister Steve Dickson announced during the Redcliffe by-election that recreational fishers could soon be able to fish at Scotts Point, Redcliffe, under a plan to change marine park zoning.

Premier Campbell Newman said he wanted to rezone 100m at Scotts Point to allow recreational fishing. It would become a special management area.

Mr Dickson has also called on fishermen to identify other green zones that they would like to fish.

“If there’s an area near you with good public access to the shoreline, where recreational fishing would have minimal impact on the environment, I urge you to tell your local MP,” he said.

The move has been heavily criticised by University of Queensland ecologist and laureate fellow Hugh Possingham, who said research showed that green zones produced more and larger fish.

“Larger fish have four to five times as many babies as fish half their size,” he said. “That’s why marine reserves are really good. It’s why recreational and professional fishers know to cluster at the edge of reserves because the fish they can catch there are much bigger than those in other areas.

“Opening up green zones defeats the purpose of fishers who want to catch more and bigger fish.”

Professor Possingham, who was on a scientific committee that helped determine bay zonings, called on Mr Dickson to reverse the decision.

Sunfish supported nursery areas being protected but believed many places that had been closed had little conservation value.

Ms Lynne said Sunfish supported nursery areas being protected but believed many places that had been closed had little conservation value.

Professor Possingham said recreational fishers already had ample fishing grounds, with access to 84 per cent of Moreton Bay.

Opening the beach at Scotts Point, it ensured fishers would be able to target species like whiting, flathead and bream in a prime area, leaving the rest of the zone as a protected area. This ensured the Government could say it had kept green zones even though critical areas were being fished.

Ms Lynne said Scott’s Point had no conservation value.

“We’re not prepared to accept that taking three or four fish has an impact,’’ she said.

Professor Possingham said the danger in recreational fishing was the cumulative impact which in some areas was so great that its take outweighed commercial fishing.

He said fishing in green zones had the potential to reduce positive results of protection.

A 2012 CSIRO Moreton Bay report says: “Although the new green zones have only been in place for approximately two years ... the average biomass of snapper, spangled emperor, redthroat emperor, black spot tusk fish, Maori rock cod and goldspot wrasse all increased in the new green zones.

“Changes to the marine park are still new and many of these species are long-lived, therefore the responses of populations within the new green zones may take many years to become fully evident.’’

Professor Possingham said it was odd that the Government would remove protection when good results had appeared so fast.

He said arguments that green zones led to impacts on camping and fishing shops and reduced boat sales were incorrect given growth in the industry.

Let us know what you think of fishing in green zones. Leave your comments below

Researchers identify nine steps to save waterways

research, waterways/wetlands

Jan 312014

Media release at the University of British Columbia

The key to clean water and sustainable fisheries is to follow nine guiding principles of water management, says a team of Canadian biologists.

Tomorrow’s clean water depends on nine guiding principles, says UBC Forestry Prof. John Richardson. Photo: Martin Dee.

Fish habitats need ecosystems that are rich in food with places to hide from predators and lay eggs, according to the framework published today in the journal Environmental Reviews.

Humans have put key freshwater ecosystems at risk because of land development and the loss of the vegetation along rivers and streams, says John Richardson, a professor in the Dept. of Forest and Conservation Sciences at the University of British Columbia, one of 15 freshwater biologists who created the framework to help protect fish and ecosystems into the future.

“Fish are strongly impacted when nutrients, sediments or pollutants are added to their habitat. We cannot protect fish without maintaining a healthy freshwater ecosystem,” says Richardson, who led the policy section on protecting fish habitats. Other policy sections addressed areas such as climate change and biodiversity.

Connecting waterways are also critical for healthy ecosystems, says Richardson. “If fish can’t get to breeding or rearing areas because of dams, culverts, water intakes or other changes to their habitats, then the population will not survive,” he says.

With more pressure on Canada’s freshwater ecosystems, Richardson and his colleagues wanted to create a framework of evidence-based principles that managers, policy makers and others could easily use in their work. “It’s a made in Canada solution, but the principles could be applied anywhere in the world,” he says.

BACKGROUNDER

Healthy freshwater ecosystems are shrinking and reports suggest that the animals that depend on them are becoming endangered or extinct at higher rates than marine or terrestrial species, says Richardson. Humans also depend on these ecosystems for basic resources like clean drinking water and food as well as economic activity from the natural resource sector, tourism and more.

The components of a successful management plan include:

Protect and restore habitats for fisheries
Protect biodiversity as it enhances resilience and productivity
Identify threats to ecosystem productivity
Identify all contributions made by aquatic ecosystems
Implement ecosystem based-management of natural resources while acknowledging the impact of humans
Adopt a precautionary approach to management as we face uncertainty
Embrace adaptive management – environments continue to change so research needs to be ongoing for scientific evidence-based decision making
Define metrics that will indicate whether management plans are successful or failing
Engage and consult with stakeholders
Ensure that decision-makers have the capacity, legislation and authority to implement policies and management plans.

These recommendations are based on nine principles of ecology:

Acknowledge the physical and chemical limits of an ecosystem
Population dynamics are at work and there needs to be a minimum number of fish for the population to survive
Habitat quantity and quality are needed for fish productivity
Connecting habitats is essential for movement of fish and their resources
The success of freshwater species is influenced by the watershed
Biodiversity enhances ecosystem resilience and productivity
Global climate change affects local populations of fish
Human impacts to the habitat affect future generations of fish
Evolution is important to species survival

To access a copy of the paper, visit the journal Environmental Reviews.

Mozzie Research Creates a Buzz

Interest, research

Dec 272013

The work of Dr Nigel Beebe's laboratory seeks to improve our understanding of mosquitoes and their role in mosquito-borne disease. Utilising strong collaborative links into the field, they integrate traditional entomological procedures with molecular genetics and informatics-based technologies to deliver new insights into vector biology and ecology. The laboratory tries to answer fundamental questions including how are species identified, which mosquito species transmit disease pathogens, where they exist and why they are there, as well as how populations connect and move.

Research shows single-use plastic contaminating our oceans

environment, fisheries, research, waterways/wetlands, wildlife

Nov 292013

Original story by Beau Pearson, ABC News

An academic studying Australian water pollution, is encouraging people to use less single-use plastic products in order to reduce marine pollution.

The University of WA's Julia Reisser says every square kilometre of Australian surface sea water is contaminated by around 4,000 tiny pieces of plastic.

A recycling symbol on the side of a water bottle. Julia Reisser is encouraging people to reduce single-use plastics such as disposable water bottles. Photo: Giulio Saggin, ABC News

The research found most of the particles were a result of a breakdown of disposable products such as water bottles, plastic cups and fishing gear.

'The sun and the heat makes the plastic weaker and it breaks down with time,'' she said.

"So let's say a plastic bottle that someone throws at the beach goes into the ocean and as it gets older and older it breaks down into little particles."

Ms Reisser says the plastics soak up pollutants, are harmful to marine life and also humans that ingest the seafood.

"When they are in the ocean it acts like a sponge for oil pollutants, for example fertilisers, so any oil pollutants that float in the water with the plastic will be attracted to the surface of the plastic and then this plastic is loaded with many kinds of pollutants," she said.

"When an animal eats it, it can be released to the animal and will intoxicate the animal, not only in the animal that ingested the plastic but also any predator of this animal, so this problem can even come to us as we eat seafood."

She says water bottles and plastic cups are a large part of the pollution.

"The solution is not simple and can involve more than one action, but I still believe that one important point is to decrease the amount of plastic waste that we are producing and to do so perhaps one of the easiest ways will be to decrease the amount of single use throwaway plastics that we use," she said.

"We need to decrease plastic waste and toxicity, regulate plastic disposal on land at an international level, and better enforce the laws prohibiting dumping plastics at sea."

Wild things get fish tongue-tied

fisheries, research

Oct 132013

Original story by Nicky Phillips, Sydney Morning Herald

If you're a fish, it's not a cat but more likely a bloodsucking parasite that's got your tongue.

Sucker: A tongue biter. Photo: Dr Daisuke Uyeno

The tongue biter, a crustacean related to crabs and lobsters, is a bizarre type of parasite that clings to the fleshy appendage of fish.

While the idea of a creature that sucks the blood from a tongue until it falls off is enough to make most people retch, biologist Melissa Beata Martin fell in love with the creatures when she was a biology student.

For more than two years, she has trawled through the vast collections of natural history museums documenting local species as part of her PhD.

Her research has uncovered two new species and four varieties never before seen in Australian waters.

''But there are likely to be more [new species] because I was only looking at museum collections,'' said Ms Martin, from the National Centre for Marine Conservation and Resource Sustainability.

Wild fish are known to transfer parasites to farmed fish so her research will help the aquaculture industry understand what species of fish different parasites prefer as hosts.

Tongue biters start life as a male and enter fish via their gills before making their way to the fish's mouth where they suck the blood from its tongue until it falls off. ''The parasite then becomes the tongue,'' Ms Martin said.

Once the parasite latches onto the tongue it turns into a female, she said. There have been cases of juvenile male parasites killing half a population of farmed fish. Other cases suggest fish can live with female parasites for years.

Great Australian Bight research program starts

research, waterways/wetlands

Aug 202013

Original story at ABC News

South Australian marine ecologist Tim Ward has been appointed to head a four-year research program into the Great Australian Bight.

The $20 million program announced in April is a joint initiative between the CSIRO, oil and gas producer BP and Marine Innovation Southern Australia.

Great Australian Bight Marine Park. Photo: Nachoman-au/WikiMedia Commons

BP is exploring for oil and gas in the area.

Associate professor Ward has been studying the Bight for the past 15 years and says he is looking forward to learning more about its unique ecosystem.

"Certainly it's a place where a lot of sampling hasn't taken place as yet, particularly in the deep water parts and so yes we're expecting ... particularly the seafloor sampling, to turn up new species," he said.

"Certainly that was the case when we did that sort of sampling in the shallow water parts of the Great Australian Bight but now we're going further offshore.

"We expect it to be at the very least, quite interesting."

He says they have already surveyed some sections of the Bight's sea floor.

"So at the end of it I think we'd like to have a well-documented account of ... how special the Great Australian Bight is, how it works, so that can underpin future management of the system, because this is an applied project, it's really about trying to understand how we manage the system into the future," he said.

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