Our oceans are increasingly under stress. Climate change and unchecked activities pose a real threat to the ecological health of the world’s oceans. By 2025, Australia’s marine industries will contribute around $100 billion each year to our economy, with our oceans and coasts providing a further $25 billion worth of ecosystem services, such as carbon dioxide absorption, nutrient cycling and coastal protection. A blue economy is one which strikes the right balance between reaping the economic potential of our oceans with the need to safeguard their longer-term health, bringing economic and social benefits that are efficient, equitable and sustainable.
Three hypothesis of change in the SE Australian Marine Ecosystem are being explored by the survey:
Observed impacts to the ecosystem, fish communities and benthic habitat over the past 30 years have been driven by exposure to bottom-contact fishing: The Habitat Hypothesis
Observed impacts to the ecosystem, fish communities and benthic habitat over the past 30 years driven by changes to the water column driven by changing ocean conditions: The Climate Hypothesis
Interactions of these two impacts are being seen through changes to the food web: The Trophic Hypothesis
SEA-MES also has a series of projects contributing to science benefit and capacity building:
Project
Leader
Client
Science Excellence
Attribution of change in the SE marine ecosystem
Climate Hypothesis
Clothilde Langlais
CSIRO
Habitat Hypothesis
Ben Scoulding
CSIRO
Trophic Hypothesis
Heidi Pethybridge
CSIRO
Genomic signals in fish species potentially affected by climate change
Sharon Hook
PacBio
Science Benefit
SEA-MES: How vulnerable are the Southeast Marine Parks to increasing pressures and are they working
Rowan Trebilco
Parks Australia
SEA-MES: Untangling the effects of fisheries and climate change
Rich Little
AFMA, FRDC
SEA-MES Coupled eDNA experiment
Bruce Deagle
NESP
SEA-MES Automated On-vessel Seabird Detector
Carlie Devine
CSIRO
Capacity Building
Understanding food web and meso-pelagic biota in temperate Australian waters
Bowen Zhang / Heidi Pethybridge
Understanding climate change and changes to fish life history parameters
