Feral pigs, wild dogs and cars are just a few of the threats facing the turtles that nest along the Queensland coast.
The Queensland and Federal Governments are launching a joint $7 million dollar campaign, they say will protect these vulnerable creatures and continue the so-called ‘the war on pests’.
Reef Turtle. Photo ABC
Indigenous rangers are welcoming the investment, saying there needs to be a focus on employment.
Traditional owner Jim Gaston has watched out for turtles for decades.
“They’ve been around for as long as we have, maybe longer, so we’ve got to look after them for the next generation.”
In his years patrolling beaches, he’s seen, first hand, the type of destruction that pests do to turtles’ nests.
“They eat the eggs and destroy the nests,” he says.
One north Queensland conversation group says the joint campaign is merely a ‘minuscule gesture’ when ‘major action’ is needed to protect marine wildlife and the reef.
Co-ordinator Wendy Tubeman says 7 million dollars won’t go far.
“It’s the case of putting a band-aid on your finger, and ignoring the cancer.”
Wildlife authorities are ramping up efforts to prevent a fatal crocodile attack amid a population spike in waters around Broome.
Crocodile trap in waters near Broome. A permanent crocodile trap has been installed in Dampier Creek amid an increase in crocodile numbers. Photo: ABC News, Erin Parke
The Department of Parks and Wildlife’s Dave Woods says for the first time, a $4,000 trap will be permanently installed at a popular fishing spot to help rangers deal with the increasing number of crocodiles in local waterways.
The five-metre aluminium contraption has a trapdoor system on it which is attached to a bait.
Night patrols are planned, and computer technology will be used to map where and when the animals come close to shore.
The program is part of a push to raise awareness of the risks of crocodiles, and Western Australia is looking to the Northern Territory for pointers.
“The Northern Territory have been the leaders in crocodile management for some time, and rather than reinventing the wheel, we’re pretty much drawing on what they’ve learnt,” Mr Woods said.
“We’re following a standard operating procedure that the Northern Territory Department of Parks and Wildlife is using.”
He said the department was going through a process of increasing skills and undertaking extra training.
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.
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.”
University of Queensland researchers, supported by staff from Sea World, Taronga Zoo and Sydney Aquarium, conduct an annual dugong health assessment in Moreton Bay. The health assessments help monitor the health of the bay’s wild dugong population and keep track of the health of coastal marine ecosystems.
How do we get the most out of our marine reserves? The government is in the process of reviewing Australia’s network of marine protected areas. The review focuses on zones that exclude recreational fishers, and whether those fishers can be allowed back in.
While we don’t know much about oceans off north west Australia, we know they’re important. Photo: Australian Institute of Marine Science
However, fishing isn’t the only threat to marine life: oil and gas developments also influence offshore waters. Separating marine protected areas and regions with oil and gas potential leads to an unrepresentative reserve system. But working with oil and gas companies could work out both for industry and our ocean.
Like oil and water
Striking the balance between biodiversity conservation and industry is never easy. It is particularly difficult in regions that support both important biodiversity values and industry assets such as oil and gas resources and important commercial and recreational fisheries.
While the current management review will focus on fishing, a very different challenge exists in Australia’s northwest marine region. Here, some of the world’s most pristine and biologically diverse marine ecosystems overlay internationally significant oil and gas reserves.
Australia’s gas production has almost doubled since the turn of the century and is expected to quadruple by 2035. In a time of transition, following a decade-long mining boom, the government is seeking to maximise access to the nation’s oil and gas resources. With the majority (92%) of Australia’s conventional gas resources located in Australia’s northwest, finding the right balance between biodiversity conservation and industry interests is difficult and potentially expensive.
In fact, disasters have happened. In 2009, this region experienced the worst offshore oil spill in Australia’s history. The blowout from PTTEP’s Montara wellhead, located 250km off the Kimberley coast, resulted in 10 weeks of continuous release of oil and gas into the Timor Sea.
In total, the oil spill was estimated to cover an area of 90,000 square kilometres. Ongoing aerial spraying with dispersants was the primary early response to the spill with tens of thousands of litres of chemical dispersants sprayed into Australian waters.
We learned two very important lessons from the spill. First, the threat of an oil spill was realised and one of our most pristine and ecologically diverse marine environments was put at risk of irreversible damage.
Second, it highlighted what we don’t know. We lack the ecological data for the region to be able to identify and manage the impacts of an oil spill.
The proposed strict no-take marine reserves for Australia’s northwest leave many ecological communities unprotected. Image: Cordelia Moore
Protecting hidden reefs and biodiversity hotspots
After the spill, scientists hurried to start filling the gaps in what we know. While we lacked pre-existing ecological data, there was little evidence of a substantial impact from the oil spill. To improve this process in the future we now have some baseline monitoring sites in place. In addition, we have a new regulator focused on the implementation of more stringent oil spill response plans and risk management procedures and individual companies have had to upgraded their response and management plans.
One important discovery was the rich coral reef communities of the submerged banks and shoals. These abrupt geological features pepper the continental shelf and shelf edge. However, as these underwater mounds plateau beneath the sea surface they have previously gone unnoticed, hidden beneath the waves.
Intensive post-spill surveys revealed the shoals to support fish diversity greater that that seen on similar features within the Great Barrier Reef. They are also positioned to act as important stepping stones for biological connectivity across Australia’s north west and may serve as an important refuge for species vulnerable to climate change.
However, the current national marine reserves system offers almost no protection for these areas (less than 2% fall within the no take marine reserves).
“World’s largest marine park network”
The previous government aimed to create the “world’s largest marine park network”. With the current network falling just shy of 30% of Australia’s territorial waters, they came very close.
Although, as Bob Pressey detailed in his article on Australia’s marine protected areas, size isn’t everything.
Last month I lead a workshop at the University of Western Australia to assess the marine park network to the north west of Australia (north of Broome). The workshop included universities, government and industry.
During the workshop we assessed just how representative the marine parks of this region actually are. With little data available on biodiversity, we used the proxy of undersea geomorphology.
What we found is that of 19 different ecological communities, only four are adequately represented, two are over-represented, seven are under-represented and six aren’t represented at all.
Because we don’t exactly know what’s under the sea, we use geomorphology as a proxy. Image: Cordelia Moore
The most vulnerable section of our marine region is the continental shelf (less than 200m depth), where threats to biodiversity are concentrated. Despite this, the majority (75%) of the proposed no take areas focuses on the abyssal plain 3000-6000 metres below the surface.
Why? Protecting biodiversity to the north west of Australia comes with substantial opportunity costs to the oil and gas industry and commercial fishers. As a result, the proposed marine reserves of Australia’s north west have weighed heavily in favour of industry.
A way forward
With a reserve system already struggling to be representative, there are very real concerns associated with making any changes outside a robust conservation planning process. Currently the federal government proposes to maintain the outer boundaries of the marine parks network, while changing zoning within the reserves to allow recreational and commercial fishers access. But without closing alternative areas, this will only compromise our limited ability to manage threatening processes and conserve biodiversity.
Examining a small fraction of the problem will only ever provide a small fraction of the solution.
At the workshop in WA, we tried to come up with a better solution. We looked at a way to maximise representativeness, while minimising costs to user groups using an advanced systematic conservation planning approach.
Preliminary analyses demonstrated that entirely excluding whole regions prospective for oil and gas reserves makes a system of marine protected areas unrepresentative while including these regions makes a reserve system very expensive.
One cost-effective solution could be found for this region by bringing industry users into the management process and agreeing that prospective areas for oil and gas extraction are not incompatible with marine biodiversity conservation. Oil and gas developments often have stringent biodiversity protection targets and with people present on most sites all the time, enforcement of adjacent no take areas is potentially far cheaper.
The possibility for the oil and gas industry to be actively engaged in the protection of marine biodiversity may be a way of offering presently unrepresented marine ecosystems some level of protection too. In general the industry’s infrastructure footprint is quite small. Major oil spills from exploration and production activities world-wide are relatively rare with just one occurring on the west coast of Australia. While the risk is low, the consequences can be high. Therefore implementing multiple protected areas is one way of ‘hedging our bets’.
In a region highly valuable to industry the costs of biodiversity protection will be high if we continue to see oil and gas interests as incompatible with conservation. But leaving these unique ecosystems without management and protection may cost us even more in the long term.
Hugh Possingham receives funding from The Australian Research Council, The National Environmental Research program and several NGOs. He is affiliated with The Wentworth Group, Trees For Life SA, BirdLife Australia and WWF Australia.
Cordelia Moore and Euan Harvey do not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article. They also have no relevant affiliations.
Marine protected areas aren’t doing their job. Photo: Charlievdb/Flickr
Marine protected areas have been created across the globe to stem the loss of biodiversity in our oceans. But are they working? Now, thanks to a six-year survey involving over one hundred divers, we know that the global system of marine protected areas still has much to achieve.
Problems out of sight
The marine environment lies out of sight and is expensive to survey, so its true condition is very poorly known. What we do know is that multiple threats — most notably introduced pests, climate change, fishing and pollution — are pervasive.
We also know that conditions are deteriorating. Numbers of many Australian marine species have collapsed since European settlement. Some species haven’t been seen for decades, such as the smooth handfish, which was once sufficiently abundant to be collected by early French naturalists visiting Australia but hasn’t been seen anywhere for more than 200 years.
If this were a mammal, bird, reptile, frog or plant, it would be listed under Commonwealth and state threatened species acts as extinct. As a marine fish, it has not been considered for any list.
We also know that marine species that build habitat for other species are declining. Coral cover across the Great Barrier Reef has been reduced by about 25% between 1986 and 2004. Global seagrass and mangrove cover have declined by 30% over the past century, with losses accelerating. And oyster reefs have largely disappeared worldwide, as have giant kelp forest ecosystems on the Tasmanian east coast.
Fishery catch statistics also show major population declines in commercially important species such as scallops, rock lobsters, barracouta, trumpeter, abalone, warehou, gemfish and sharks.
These snapshots all consistently indicate major detrimental change in our oceans.
Surveying the threats
Twenty years ago, in a bid to understand the magnitude of this change, I and my Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies colleague Neville Barrett began regularly surveying rocky reef communities in collaboration with management agencies across southern Australia. These surveys were focused inside and outside marine protected areas, to disentangle effects of fishing from broader environmental changes.
We found that each marine protected area was different. Recovery within protected areas depended on a variety of local factors, including protected area size and age, how much fishing had occurred prior to regulation, the type of regulations, and whether they were enforced.
To separate these individual factors properly required investigation of tens to hundreds of protected areas, many more than we could logistically cover with our limited scientific resources.
Coral reefs are the most diverse ecosystems in the ocean. Photo: Wilson Loo Kok Wee/Flickr
Enlisting citizen divers
This led to the idea of enlisting support from the recreational diving community, and our new study was born.
With pilot funding from the Commonwealth Environment Research Facilities program, and on-ground direction from colleague Rick Stuart-Smith, we sought help from experienced recreational divers across Australia who are passionate about marine conservation.
More than 100 divers agreed to donate their time, learning scientific underwater survey techniques, using their weekends and holidays to collect new data, and spending long hours afterwards identifying species and entering data onto computer spreadsheets.
To facilitate this program, an independent organisation called Reef Life Survey was established. It aimed to train and support member divers during field surveys, and to distribute information collected to improve knowledge and management of marine species. An incredible amount has been achieved over the past six years through the generous efforts of Reef Life Survey divers.
Most importantly, we have established a quantitative baseline describing the current state of inshore biodiversity around Australia. Numbers of more than 2500 species of fish, seaweeds and invertebrates (such as lobsters, abalone, sea urchins and corals) at more than 1500 sites have been documented.
This is the largest marine ecological baseline for any continent worldwide. It provides an invaluable reference that can be referred to through the future for tracking impacts of climate change, pollution, introduced species, and fishing.
The Reef Life Survey baseline has also now extended globally through collaboration with scientists in 18 countries, and with additional survey data collected by trained volunteer divers during their overseas holidays.
Clownfish and anemone. Photo: Paul from www.Castaways.com.au/Flickr
Parks on paper, not in the ocean
Still the question remains: how effective are marine protected areas at conserving marine life?
We recently analysed data from 40 countries to understand better the underlying factors that make marine protected areas effective as conservation tools, with results published in the journal Nature today.
We found no difference between fish communities present in most of 87 marine protected areas studied worldwide, when compared with communities in fished areas with similar environmental conditions.
Many protected areas thus seem to be “paper parks” — lines on the map that fail to achieve desired conservation outcomes.
However, some protected areas are extremely effective, with massive numbers of large fish and extremely high conservation value. These effective protected areas are typified by the same recurring features: no fishing, well enforced, more than 10 years old, relatively large in area, and isolated from fished areas by habitat boundaries (deep water or sand).
Protected areas with these characteristics, such as Middleton Reef off northeastern New South Wales, had on average twice as many species of large fish per transect, eight times more large fish, and 20 times more sharks than fished areas.
Getting marine parks right
Management agencies around the world clearly need to focus on creating more of these effective protected areas. At the same time they need to alter the design and management of the many existing protected areas that aren’t working. The few conservation gems are presently hidden amongst protected areas that are ineffective because of inadequate regulations or poor enforcement.
We also need to improve broad-scale environmental management more generally, considering how fast our oceans are deteriorating outside of protected areas.
Fishing is one of the last direct connections between humanity and the natural world. As a fisher who supports fishing, I see no incongruity in advocating that 20% of the marine environment be placed in effective no-take protected areas. Leaving 80% open to fishing hardly qualifies as threatening fishers’ interests.
Among other benefits, including acting as irreplaceable scientific reference areas, protected areas provide some insurance for future generations against ecosystem collapse.
I have little doubt that 50 years from now fishers will regret the slow pace of developing effective marine protected areas. They will also bemoan consequences of blanket opposition against any protected areas by some politicians and industry lobbyists, and an over-reliance of fisheries managers on computer models that attempt to maximise economic returns with little margin for error in an era of change when model variables increasingly fall outside known bounds.
Graham Edgar has received funds from Commonwealth and State agencies for research activities associated with marine conservation. He fishes, and many years ago worked commercially as a deckhand for an abalone diver. His University of Tasmania job is part-time, and diving surveys for the global study described here were undertaken in his spare time as a volunteer for the Reef Life Survey Foundation. He is also a director of an environmental consulting company, Aquenal Pty Ltd.
Oregonichthys crameri, the Oregon Chub recovered to the extent it no longer needs a threatened species status. Photo: USFWS
A two-inch minnow found only in an Oregon valley will be the first fish removed from the [U.S.] federal threatened and endangered species list because it no longer faces extinction, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced on Tuesday.
The Oregon chub once swam by the millions in the ponds, sloughs and marshes near the Williamette River in western Oregon. Its numbers declined sharply over the last century as wetlands were drained for development and due to predation by nonnative fish like largemouth bass.
Fewer than 1,000 remained in just eight wetlands in 1993 when the Oregon chub gained protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Today, more than 150,000 chubs are estimated in 80 sites along the river valley because of recovery efforts like restoring water flows, floodplain reconstruction and stocking in private ponds, said Paul Scheerer, leader of the native fishes project for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
“It’s a sign of hope not just for this fish, which is sort of inconspicuous, but for efforts everywhere that partner with federal and state agencies, private landowners, tribes and towns to prevent species from disappearing off the face of the earth,” he said.
A 60-day public comment period on the proposal to lift federal safeguards from the once-imperiled minnow opens on Thursday. The Interior Department agency is to finalize delisting within the next 12 months.
‘SMALL BUT IMPORTANT’
The Oregon chub eats aquatic insects like mosquitoes and has a lifespan of up to 10 years. Scheerer said repair of its riparian habitat also helps rare amphibians like the red-legged frog and native reptiles like the Western pond turtle.
“Even my own mother said to me, ‘You’re recovering a bait fish?’ The Oregon chub may be small but it has an important role in the larger scheme of things,” said Scheerer.
“This is an excellent example of how the Endangered Species Act is intended to function: partners working together to recover an endangered species,” Service Director Dan Ashe said in a statement.
There are 85 U.S. species of fish listed as endangered and 71 listed as threatened, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service. Five types of fish, including the Tecopa pupfish of the California desert, have been delisted due to extinction in the 40 years since the law was enacted, said Scheerer.
Phil Pister, retired fishery biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and founder of the conservation-oriented Desert Fishes Council, said it is important to save fish like Oregon chub that have no apparent commercial value.
“When people ask why it’s important to rescue endangered fish, I ask them, ‘How would you feel if you were the fish?'”
SUNSHINE Coast conservation groups have laid out the red carpet for thousands of turtle hatchlings due to hit local beaches in coming weeks.
Volunteers collected 220kg of rubbish yesterday, after scouring the sand from Shelly Beach to Buddina, and cleaning up the waterway around La Balsa Park.
Sunshine Coast Turtle Care, Reef Check Australia, Sunshine Coast Council, UnderWater World SEA LIFE Mooloolaba and members of the public teamed up for the first time to clean up for the turtle hatchlings.
Council conservation officer Kate Winter said cigarette butts, fishing debris, cans, clothing and hard plastics, including water bottles, were the most common items found.
“I truly am surprised by the amount that has come up here. It’s far greater than I had expected,” she said.
Ms Winter said the collection of hard plastics was the focus of yesterday’s effort.
“We want to make sure we get as many hatchlings out to the water and in 30 years back to our beaches as nesting turtles,” she said.
“Those hard plastics float on the surface and in the pelagic phase of a turtle’s life, that’s when they’re feeding on the surface.”
There are 23 nests from Shelly Beach to Buddina, each producing between 100 and 200 hatchlings in the next two months.
The first is due in the next couple of days.
UnderWater World animal health man-ager Emily Thomas said the last thing they wanted was for the turtles to head out into a “big sea of rubbish”.
Reef Check Australia community engagement officer Jodi Salmond donned her diving gear to clean up the Mooloolah River mouth from La Balsa Park.
She came ashore with bags of fishing debris, tackle, broken glass, cans and lots of degradable plastic bags caught among the rocks.
“It’s important to have an idea of what’s not just on the beach but what’s making its way into the water,” she said.
The clean-up information will be collated into the Australian Marine Debris Initiative database.
“When they autopsy turtles, we find out what’s in their guts and then we start to see what’s on the land and what’s in the water,” Miss Salmond said.
“We can start to source track where these things are coming from and how we can make real differences.”
Wayne Foster, from Golden Beach, was among the lay volunteers, cleaning up the northern tip of Bribie Island after finding a few turtle nests on his daily walk.
“A lot of people come and have a lovely day, but they’ll always leave two or three pieces behind,” he said.
“We try and go across and if we see something we’ll pick it up and bring it back.”
URBANISATION, habitat degradation and waterway barriers have led to decreased numbers of native fish in NSW waterways in recent years, but programs by the Department of Primary Industries (DPI) have worked on restocking fish in these areas.
Native fish fingerlings ready for release.
Under constant threat of having their habitat destroyed, native fish have needed a helping hand from organisations such as the DPI and Landcare to increase numbers as well as improve recreational fishing opportunities.
NSW DPI fisheries management officer Ben Doolan, Nelson Bay, said close to three million trout and salmon and two million native fish, produced by government and private commercial hatcheries, were stocked into inland NSW waters each year.
“There are four species of salmonids, which are rainbow trout, brown trout, Atlantic salmon, brook trout, and four native species, which includes Australian bass, golden perch, Murray cod, silver perch, stocked for recreational fishing,” he said.
“Trout cod and Macquarie perch are stocked for conservation purposes to aid in the recovery of those species.”
Typically, four hatcheries provide fingerlings, also known as fry, for restocking.
The Port Stephens Fisheries Institute hatchery produce Australian bass, which are released into major impoundments along the east coast including Glenbawn Dam, Glennies Creek Dam and Lostock Dam in the upper Hunter Valley, Tallowa Dam near Kangaroo Valley, and Lake Wallace and Lake Lyell near Lithgow.
Mr Doolan said during restocking seasons, which varied for each species of fish, there were no restrictions for recreational fishers.
“We aren’t usually too concerned about recreational fishers being in the vicinity of newly released fish,” he said.
“The fry or fingerlings are not susceptible to recreational fishing due to their size and are mobile and will find suitable habitat.”
However, closed fishing seasons for some species have been implemented to reduce pressure or interaction with mature fish during times of spawning.
“Some species are closed for a period of time during the year, however trout cod and eastern freshwater cod are protected all year round and must be released if caught,” he said.
“There is a closure on all forms of fishing in the Murray River between Yarrawonga and Tocumwal for added protection during the (trout cod) breeding season and throughout the Mann River and some of its tributaries during August and October for eastern freshwater cod.”
Mr Doolan said these closures were primarily implemented to protect the adult fish, although the trout and salmon closure protected juvenile trout as it stopped recreational fishers wading in rivers – an activity which could disturb eggs attached to stones or gravel.
Feral pigs, wild dogs and cars are just a few of the threats facing the turtles that nest along the Queensland coast.
