OUR PROJECT - WHY WE ARE DOING IT?

Tasmanian recreational diving clubs, assisted by the Tasmanian Government's Fishwise Fund, have agreed to undertake an ambitious program of scientific surveys on Tasmania's East Coast rocky reef.

Many divers have seen disturbing changes in the oceans over the last few decades including the loss of Giant Kelp beds, declines in some fish species, more invasive marine pests and the effects of climate change warming the East Coast of Tasmania.   These threats indicate a wider problem with the health of our oceans and show that Tasmania’s unique underwater wilderness is going through a period of major change.

A major catalyst for the project has been the appearance of devastating urchin barrens off the East Coast of Tasmania. Monitoring the spread of these barrens has been selected as the priority task for the first stage of this project.

Local recreational dive clubs have been advised that reef monitoring can be an important way to assist scientists in gaining a better understanding of our changing marine environment.   

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES – What we hope to achieve from the project

• Monitor the effect of invasive marine species, particularly the long-spined sea urchin Centrostephanus Rogersii on representative sites.
• Identify major shifts in biodiversity at representative sites (main focus initially will be on the formation of urchin barrens) and provide an ‘early warning system’ for threats to that biodiversity.
• Educate divers and the general community about the marine environment.
• Provide other information collected during surveys, such as seaweed samples and photographs of unique animals to scientific bodies for further research.
• Provide reliable data (initially on urchin barrens) that will complement any studies planned to be undertaken by scientific bodies.
• Analyse and refine methods for volunteer participation in volunteer research projects.
• Build up a volunteer skills base for further community research projects.

How we will undertake the project

The project will consult with the local scientific community to create an education and training program. Divers have recently been invited ti undertake supervised survey methodology training.

In consultation with stakeholders, survey sites will be selected. Particular emphasis will be placed in monitoring the advance of urchin barrens along the East Coast. These will be a mixture of repeat surveys of sites previously studied in 2001 and deeper dives in the 15M – 20M range that have not been studied previously. The surveys will count urchins, crayfish, abalone and note general macroalgae density. If funding, time and manpower permits, advanced training will be offered to volunteers based more on improving understanding of reef communities and species identification.

These surveys will be organised so that complement rather than overlap, existing scientific programs.

This project will initially focus on mobilising, training and educating volunteers. It will also provide useful sea urchin density data from initial surveys. Regular monitoring, which it is hoped will flow from this project, will provide hard data on the urchin threat over time. This information will become a valuable management tool in determining the long-term changes in the reef ecosystem. It is also hoped that divers will gradually learn to add more complex measurements and be able to participate in a wider variety of scientific surveys in the longer-term.

Images provided by Adriaan Van Huissteden and James Parkinson