What do studies on sharks, brittle-stars and marine reserves, and marine communities, have in common? Well, for one thing, they all require a level of collaboration.

Three papers in this newsletter are the result of global collaborations where NERP Marine Biodiversity Hub researchers have developed or played leading roles:

• Graham Edgar (University of Tasmania) led scientists and recreational divers in 40 countries to determine what makes an effective marine protected area.
• Charles Darwin University and CSIRO researchers worked with 300 scientists from 64 countries to provide the first systematic global assessment of the status of 1,041 species of sharks and rays. Pete Kyne was the Oceania vice-chair, supported by Richard Pillans and Ross Daley; William White was co-chair taxonomy.
• Tim O’Hara (Museum Victoria) developed a national program on brittle-stars into a global investigation with taxonomists and curators from numerous countries around the world.

These are three examples of the global reach of NERP Marine Biodiversity Hub research and illustrate how necessary collaborations are to progressing science today. The three initiatives also share in common that they have spanned the Commonwealth Environment Research Facilities and National Environmental Research Program, indicating the value of continuity and time in developing studies that will have influence nationally and globally.

Scientific collaboration is especially important in the marine environment which is both harder to survey and has a much richer history of biodiversity than the land – half of the animal phyla in the oceans have yet to evolve on to the land. We only have to look at the difficulties in finding the Malaysian Airlines flight 370 compared to what would have happened if it had disappeared over land to understand the challenge of marine research and discovery. It is requiring a multinational collaboration of military, industry and scientific to address this challenge.  In the case of Australia’s first re-survey of an established deepwater reserve - the Tasmania Seamounts Marine Reserve established in 1999 and re-surveyed in 2006 - it was only possible to determine whether there had been a recovery of deepwater fauna by collaborating with New Zealand scientists to share our knowledge and experience. The collaboration of Australian research partners driven by the CERF and NERP programs means that the re-survey of the Tasman Fracture Commonwealth Marine Reserve later this year - 7 years after its declaration in 2007 and a NERP Emerging Priority -  will have a much better chance of detecting any recovery in previously fished areas compared to areas outside the reserve that are still fished.

If the need for collaboration in marine science is sometimes underestimated, it appears that the presence of collaboration in the marine communities themselves may have been overestimated. A team led by the late Rebecca Leaper (University of Tasmania) suggests that marine communities are transient manifestations of a larger species pool brought together by favourable environmental conditions. There appeared to be little evidence for a stable underlying network of interacting species.

Commonwealth Environment Research Facilities (CERF) and National Environmental Research Program (NERP)

Contact

Prof Nic Bax
Director and Principal Investigator
NERP Marine Biodiversity Hub
University of Tasmania