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Australian coastline survey reveals biodiversity loss




Australia’s coastline fish life has been reduced in the space of a year announced the University of Tasmania’s Reef Life Survey Foundation (The Canberra Times, February 21, 2014).

The year-long continental reef sea life survey is a world first.  The University of Tasmania (UTAS) survey of reef sea life along the entire coastline of Australia ended in Hobart on February 19. Volunteer divers collected data from 700 coral and rock reef sites for the survey, making it the first comprehensive study of reef systems in any continent in the world. UTAS’s Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies revealed the biodiversity loss.

UTAS indicated that biodiversity loss is not solely the result of overfishing, but is also due to the spread of invasive species, as well as pollution near major port cities.

The institute’s Reef Life Survey Foundation used a 14-metre catamaran called Reef Dragon to circumnavigate Australia – a distance of 12,000 nautical miles – while 75 trained volunteer divers examined the reefs up to 400 nautical miles offshore. This included the Coral Sea in the northeast of Australia and the North-West Shelf of Western Australia, finishing in Hobart, the state capital of Tasmania, in the south.

UTAS revealed that some reefs were “doing really well, particularly off the North-West Shelf where there are good numbers of large fish” but elsewhere the coral reefs were being degraded by bleaching. Coral bleaching is when the colour of coral degrades due to the breakdown of the symbiotic relationship between coral and zooxanthallae (marine algae). It’s a form of starving because most corals can’t survive with the algae. Bleaching occurs when the coral is stressed due to pollution, high sea temperatures, low salinity, or poor water quality (www.gbrmpa.gov.au).

I highlighted the issue of coral bleaching in 1996 in my award-winning article, “Canaries in coal mines: corals in reefs” published by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) as part of the James Cook University CRC Reef Research Centre competition. It focused on corals as early detectors of pollution, and therefore early warning systems for reef management.  (http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/~crcreef/4news/Exploring/feat26.html)  


The best protection for reef sea life appears to be the well-enforced “no-take” marine reserves that are more than 10 years old, more than 100 square kilometres in area, and isolated by deep waters or sand bars.


Australia has 3.1 million square kilometres of marine reserves. Currently the Australian government is not continuing funding for the protection of the marine reserves’ management plans and no-take zones.




MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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