This is the conclusion of the sixth year of the Marine Biodiversity Hub, which commenced research under the Commonwealth Environment Research Facilities program in 2008, and was continued under the current National Environmental Research Program in 2011. There have been some interesting changes over that time, including the Department changing its name 4 times! The Department of the Environment’s activities in conserving marine biodiversity have changed focus from planning to implementation and management, requiring a quite different set of tools and expertise that the Hub has been fortunate to contribute to. Thus, Hub scientists have expanded the original emphasis on discovery, description and prediction, to include the science of efficient monitoring, statistical baselines, and building the national monitoring capacity.

The Marine Hub has grown from 5 to 7 partners, expanding in the process to include a more northern focus and to really live up to its aim of providing national leadership in marine biodiversity research, particularly supporting the Department in its roles. Collaborative work with the Department has expanded from a theoretical exploration of market-based instruments and offsets, to looking at how the Department could implement marine offsets under the EPBC Act; how to progress from policy-level objectives developed during planning of the Commonwealth Marine Reserve (CMR) network to the measurable objectives required for managing this network; how to estimate multiple or cumulative impacts; and, importantly, to assess what the public understand and desire from both offsets and the CMR network.

Important additions to the Hub’s research portfolio are collection of new marine data from both temperate and sub-tropical environments and threatened species listed under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). The need for new data has been largely driven by the conservation values identified in marine bioregional plans and Commonwealth Marine Reserves, and threatened species recovery plans.

Scientific capacity has increased noticeably over the six years with new statistical approaches that predict biodiversity distributions with uncertainty, and new genetic approaches that are used to date the times of speciation for important marine taxa, linking them to movements of the continental plate on which Australia sits. Genetic approaches are also being used to estimate population size and trend from a single time sample of juveniles for largetooth sawfish and Northern River sharks, and are now being extended to white sharks. This approach will provide answers to key questions in these species recovery plans that were impossible to answer using the techniques available only 3 years ago, and portend the development of an entirely new approach to population estimation.  Meanwhile, we are working with those that manage Australia’s national marine research infrastructure to increase its value to the Australian Government and are working with international experts in deep sea survey techniques to identify what is required to effectively monitor Australia’s deepwater marine reserves.

In the face of all these changes, what has remained constant has been the dedication of individuals in both the Department and the Marine Hub, to improve the conservation of Australia’s marine biodiversity. Time and again, I am impressed by the commitment of Departmental staff to make the best decisions, often in the face of intense public scrutiny and a myriad of other pressures. I always expect scientists to be committed to their research and getting published, but here again I am frequently impressed at the desire of scientists from PhD students to national leaders to provide science that will have an impact on the Department’s decision-making and provide it in a form that maximizes that impact – often at the expense of more academic products that would prove better for their immediate careers.

2014 - the seventh year of the Marine Biodiversity Hub - is going to be an exciting year with many strands of research coming together for publication and an exacting schedule of engagement with the Department and other stakeholders to ensure that the research has as large an impact as possible. But now, at the end of 2013, I would like to take a pause to thank all the scientists in the NERP Marine Biodiversity Hub and the Departmental staff that we work with for your commitment. I look forward to working with you next year.

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