There are so many opportunities for kids to get amongst science at school these days – the Bright Sparks programme, the Science Fair, the CREST programme, the Freemason’s Reel Science Film Festival, among many others. Realise the Dream in a way acts as an umbrella over these initiatives, taking top achievers from each, treating them to an action packed science camp in December, and then wrapping it up with the much anticipated Awards Night.

The top prize, the Genesis Energy Supreme Award, went to an outstanding student from Onslow College, Stanley Roache. Stanley explored and later modeled the phenomenon of coloured rings that are visible when you look down the end of highly polished metal tubes. This guy blew me away – not only does he have an incredible grasp of physics, he can also really hold his own in front of a crowd, as evidenced by his totally unscripted and very sincere acceptance speech. And this was no school assembly! Dotted around the room were the Governor General, the Minister of Science, the Chancellor of Massey University, the Prime Minister’s 2010 Emerging Scientist John Watt, Chief Executives of high-powered companies…. you get the picture.

If you get a spare moment and feel like a good dose of inspiration, go to the Realise the Dream website and learn more about the incredible research projects that these students have done – you’ll learn about the invention of a remote control lawnmower, developments in the treatment of mastitis in dairy cows, a device to transfer data directly between memory sticks, ways for parents to monitor their children’s internet usage and how temperature influences the feeding rate of bees. But I must warn you: be prepared to feel rather inadequate – I certainly did when I thought back to my school science project – trying to figure out which chicken was the boss in our paddock…

At a global level, New Zealand is regarded to have some of the most well managed fisheries. Here, most exploited species are managed under the Quota Management System (QMS), which regulates the total catch for each species. But you may be surprised to know that not all marine species are managed in this way – there are some which, as a consequence of their exclusion from the QMS, are effectively “open access fisheries”.  Commercial fishers still need to have permits to take these species, but there is no apparent limit as to how many permits can be handed out.

The reason these species (think seahorses, cat’s eyes and sea anemones) are not in the QMS is because they are not considered to be desirable as fishery targets. But as times change, so do appetites for the weird and wonderful. For example, the Ministry of Fisheries has recently entered giant kelp into the QMS, as there is potential for the kelp to be used as feed in paua farms and in the pharmaceutical industry. I have blogged on this contentious issue previously.

But today I would like to draw your attention to the plight of the lowly hagfish (aka the snot eel). Whilst it appears that the western world is only interested in hagfish for entertainment purposes (an episode of Fear Factor comes to mind), they are much sought after by asian markets where the flesh is eaten and the skin made into designer leather (marketed as eel skin). The high demand for hagfish coupled with unregulated fisheries led to complete collapse of fisheries in Southeast Asia in the 1980’s, the West Coast of the United States in the 1990’s, followed by the East Coast in the early 2000’s. For now the New Zealand population appears to be in a good state, although perhaps not for long according to our sole resident hagfish expert, Dr Ric Martini. “There has never been a sustainable commercial fishery for these animals anywhere in the world, and there’s no reason New Zealand should be an exception.”

Kiss anyone? New Zealand's most common hagfish, Eptatretus cirrhatus. Photo: Stephen Wing

Four years ago one company, Tuere Fishing Ltd. of Christchurch, began small-scale commercial hagfish fishing in New Zealand coastal waters. Although the venture hasn’t been wildly successful, it continues to operate and interest in Korea has been sufficient to attract a second company operating out of Tauranga. Dr Martini is concerned that the fishery here is currently unregulated. “The startup fishery got the attention of the Korean buyers, and now others are moving into the market. Without regulatory oversight, we risk a “gold-rush” fishery, where multiple companies capitalize heavily to maximize their catch.  Experience suggests that the boats will get larger and more numerous and landings will skyrocket while the catch per unit effort declines, and then in 3-5 years the fishery will collapse.”

But who cares about a stinking, slimy fish that lives at the depths of the ocean?

Although very little is known about the biology of our most common species, Eptatretus cirrhatus, it appears that they play a key role in deep sea ecosystems – as a food source for large fish and marine mammals, as key scavengers of carrion and as aerators of deep sea sediment. Dr Martini has counted upwards of 325,000 hagfish in a square kilometer! Yes, you read this correctly, three hundred and twenty-five THOUSAND. Surely at densities this high, hagfish must have a high impact on their habitat and interact with other species that live there.

The likelihood of sustainable management of a fishery increases with the knowledge of the target species. Unfortunately for hagfish, very little is known about even the most basic life history characteristics such as growth rates, breeding grounds, embryo development, age structure of the population, or natural mortality rates. But we do know that they reproduce slowly – females produce only 20-40 large eggs that take 1-2 years to produce, and another year to develop into young hagfish. So they are certain to be at least as vulnerable to overfishing as the pelagic sharks – and fisheries for sharks have proven to be extremely difficult to manage sustainably. It would be prudent, then, to treat the burgeoning New Zealand hagfish fishery with great care.

A good place to begin, according to Dr Martini, would be to undertake some baseline surveys around New Zealand to estimate the size of the population. This information, combined with improved knowledge of basic life history characteristics would form the basis for management of the fishery. However, there are steps that can be taken in the meantime whilst that information is being collected. Faced with similar regulatory uncertainties, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans has classified hagfish as an “experimental fishery.” This involves issuing a limited number of permits (for example, only one vessel is permitted to fish for hagfish in water offshore from British Columbia), making escape holes in pots mandatory to allow juveniles to escape, collecting catch data, and encouraging collaboration with scientists to research the life history of these animals and to detect any changes in the hagfish population as the fishery operates. The Canadian program is an appropriate model for New Zealand to adopt, as it would allow the fishery to develop under tightly controlled conditions that protect the resource.

As pressure mounts on the New Zealand hagfish fishery it is important that the Ministry of Fisheries reconsider the status of hagfish in our waters, and move towards regulating the extraction of this vulnerable species – experience shows that if we continue on our current course, this fishery is headed for collapse!

Professor Terry Chapin, President Elect of the Ecological Society of America

Whilst public debate continues about the validity of the science in the IPCC reports, animals and plants – apparently oblivious to all the chit chat – are changing their distributions on a massive scale. As the climate warms, butterflies, sea urchins and fishes, to name just a few, are moving further towards the poles. Marine animals are inhabiting deeper depths as water warms, and land plants and animals are living at higher altitudes. Along with these shifts in range come implications for humans – inevitably we will be forced to change the way we fish, hunt, farm, obtain water and interact with our environment.

Professor Chapin has been working in the Alaskan interior, investigating the effects of wildfires on forests and the humans who live among them. Wildfires are naturally occurring in these parts and have been a feature of the region for at least the last 6000 years. But what has changed recently is the frequency and intensity of the fires, with lots of fires breaking out in ever more common hot, dry years. Another shift over the past few decades has been the movement of indigenous people from small, nomadic communities, to larger more permanent towns. Where once, people used to move in response to fires, the fires now have the potential to cause major disruption and threat to communities.

There are two main forest types in the Alaskan back blocks – black spruce, which is fire prone and is associated with permafrost, and broadleaf forest, which is less flammable. After particularly severe fires in black spruce forests, broadleaf forests tend to regenerate. However, in some of the drier regions, it is possible that forest may not regenerate, with the land converting to grassland. And so it seems likely that the Alaskan landscape is likely to change dramatically in the future if the high frequency of wildfires continues. Large scale changes in plant coverage like this will affect numbers and distribution of wild animals such as caribou, which provide an important food source. The indigenous people are strongly linked to the land and the landscape is set to drastically change.

Fire consumes black spruce forest

Professor Chapin is proposing that Alaskans take an active role in modifying the landscape around them, to protect them from the consequences of wildfires. Maybe this could involve harvesting forests that surround townships to decrease the fire risk. Fighting fires is an expensive business – perhaps large scale changes in landuse could lower the costs.

I have to say that these ideas make me more than a little uncomfortable. Maybe it’s my inner tree-hugger coming out… Surely the ESA aren’t encouraging us to cut down forests?! A quick read of a recent position statement from the society “Ecosystem Management in a Changing Climate” was somewhat comforting.

“Ecosystems are already responding to climate change. Continued warming—some of which is now unavoidable—may impair the ability of many such systems to provide critical resources and services like food, clean water, and carbon sequestration. Buffering against the impacts of climate change will require new strategies to both mitigate the extent of change and adapt to changes that are inevitable. The sooner such strategies are deployed, the more effective they will be in reducing irreversible damage.

Ecosystems can be managed to limit and adapt to both the near- and long-term impacts of climate change. Strategies that focus on restoring and maintaining natural ecosystem function (reducing deforestation, for example) are the most prudent; strategies that drastically alter ecosystems may have significant and unpredictable impacts.”

It seems that the extent to which we should physically modify landscapes (versus allowing changes to occur without intervention) will need to be assessed on a case by case basis. One thing that is certain is that ecologists have a vital role in predicting future ecosystem-level changes, and advising how to make humans more resilient to changing environments. The role of the ecologist is moving beyond describing ecosystems and investigating how they function. Ecologists will increasingly be turned to for guidance on adaptive solutions to climate change.

The proposed network of marine protected areas that was put out for public consultation last year

The process has been a lengthy one with the forum, which includes a wide range of stakeholders (fishers, iwi, environmental groups, tourism etc.), being established five years ago. The MPA Policy and Implementation Plan encourages a community-based approach to marine management, and was established following the successful introduction of the Fiordland Marine Management Area by the stakeholder group The Guardians of Fiordland in 2005. The Labour-led Government obviously believed that this community-led initiative was more likely to result in successful MPA introductions than the traditional “top down” approach where the Department of Conservation (DoC) proposed sites for future reserves and often faced intense public opposition.

Whilst I am very supportive of the new approach, I have in the past voiced concerns about the degree to which scientific knowledge of the marine environment will be considered during the decision making process. I was initially quite alarmed to see that the West Coast Forum did not contain any marine scientists. However, a trawl through the minutes of the forum meetings revealed that members did indeed seek advice and briefings from scientists including those from DoC, the Ministry of Fisheries and NIWA. Scientists nationwide were also given the opportunity to comment during the public consultation process. The West Coast forum was established prior to the new policy, and so future regional groups will be required to have at least one scientist on each committee.

Being a remote and wild stretch of coast, it is perhaps not surprising that the level of scientific knowledge and understanding about marine life and ecosystem functioning in this region is not as high as other parts of the country. In days gone, opponents used such knowledge gaps to argue against marine protection. The new system is based on habitat classification, as it is widely accepted that species assemblages are largely predicted by physical features of habitat such as substratum type (sand, reef etc.) and water depth. Such information is relatively easy to obtain, and a spread of MPAs among different habitat types makes protection more inclusive, and provides for species that migrate among different habitat types during their life cycle. The proposal on the West Coast therefore includes, among other habitats, estuaries, coastal and offshore reefs and sand flats.

The West Coast process is far from settled – now that the submissions have been analyzed, the proposal will be modified accordingly prior to being submitted to Minter’s of Fisheries and Conservation for consideration. The members of this forum deserve credit for putting in the years of hard work, debate and consultation. Unfortunately, on a national level we are far from 10% by 2010, but at least things are moving in the right direction.

I recently went to a talk by Kim Hill entitled “Is science something we should fear?”

Being a scientist, I thought Kim was joking. Why would the public not value and embrace the knowledge and lessons learned by people that in essence, spend their time trying to better understand and improve the world? It started me thinking about the role that scientists should have in guiding decisions about how we manage our environment, in particular our coastal marine areas.

New Zealand has an excellent reputation for marine conservation, due to initiatives including our quota management system and the growing numbers of marine reserves. The Government is currently developing a framework that will essentially allow locals to decide how they want marine protection measures to proceed around their coasts.

This move is occurring partly in response to very vocal opposition to proposed marine reserves in some parts of the country. The idea is that by involving the community in the decision process, people will have a vested interest in the outcomes, resulting in a higher level of support for the introduced protection measures.

The framework for these local groups will be similar to that of the Fiordland Marine Guardians; a group of “stakeholders” (e.g. fishers, tangata whenua, tourism operators etc.), who proposed a series of conservation measures to be established in the fjords. Following many years of discussion, negotiation, and compromise, the Guardians presented a proposal to Parliament in 2003, and in 2005 the Fiordland Marine Management Act was established. The protection measures include 10 marine reserves, reductions in recreational quota, and restrictions on commercial fishing areas, anchoring etc. These decisions were guided by the expert opinion and knowledge of a marine ecologist from Otago University.

In February 2008 the Department of Conservation and the Ministry of Fisheries released an implementation strategy for this new regional approach to marine management. The document outlines how a forum of up to 14 stakeholders will be appointed in each of the defined regions in NZ. These stakeholders will encompass tangata whenua, commercial fishers, recreational users, conservation groups, tourism operators, aquaculture industry, minerals industry… and scientists.

It will be the task of each forum to reach a consensus on areas to be proposed for marine protection, and make recommendations of what the protection measures should involve. Each of the stakeholders will have equal status in discussions and decision-making. This is the part that concerns me.

Processes that occur in the marine environment and marine ecosystems are inherently complex and can vary significantly over small distances, and also over time. The effectiveness of protection measures are likely to be dependent upon what they consist of, where they are placed, and how big an area they cover.

For example, in the fjords it appears that the new marine reserves are differing in their ability to “recover”. In Doubtful Sound, we have found that changes in crayfish numbers can be related to the amount of food that is available at each location. Near the output of the Manapouri hydroelectric power station, where increased freshwater has led to a decline in mussels and other clams (crayfish food), crayfish are not recovering.

In contrast, in other marine reserves where there is plenty of crayfish food, crayfish numbers are rapidly increasing. This is just one of many examples that demonstrate the success of a marine protected area (MPA) can vary significantly depending on its location, shape and size.

Whilst it is incredibly important to have the support of the local community for MPAs, it is equally, if not more important to get the characteristics of the MPA correct in the first place. Otherwise, it is possible that no amount of protection will lead to “recovery” of the marine ecosystem. To increase the likelihood of designing an MPA that is going to be effective, management recommendations put forward by the regional forums need to critically evaluate all reliable knowledge and data pertaining to the marine environment in question.

And keep in mind that this information will not necessarily come solely from scientists. The extensive local knowledge of other interested parties such as fishers and tangata whenua has a large role to play here too. My point is that debate and negotiation from all interested parties should be based upon the best available knowledge, and where available, data.

To provide advice about how to design effective MPAs, scientists need answers to questions such as: What lives there? How fast do things grow and how much do they move around? Where does the food come from that is supporting the community? Where do the young come from? Are there any ongoing impacts?

It is paramount that decisions regarding the placement and degree of MPAs are based upon such fundamental ecological knowledge, and you would be surprised just how little is known about these processes on a small scale around our coasts. So, to support management recommendations and decisions that will have a high likelihood of success, it is essential that the Government funds fundamental ecological research in our coastal seas.

Earlier I said that I was concerned about scientists being considered as stakeholders in these regional forums. These concerns are due to the fact that when it comes to deciding upon management recommendations, scientists will effectively have one 14th of the vote.

I am concerned that such a small influence will lead to expert scientific advice getting diluted. Ask any scientist that has witnessed or been involved in the process of the creation of an MPA: “was it big enough?” And they will invariably say “NO!” Because more often than not during the consultation and negotiation process, the size of the desirable MPA gets whittled down to a fraction of it’s former self.

The question to these scientists then becomes: “Do you think it will still work?” And that is where many scientists will have doubts. I strongly believe that whilst public consultation is very valuable and necessary, scientific knowledge and advice must not be diluted when it comes to making decisions about the future of marine management in New Zealand.

We are entering exciting times with respect to the marine environment. One hopes that in years to come, all New Zealanders will be able to take a short trip to their local marine reserve, and explore an intact and healthy marine ecosystem.

For this vision to become a reality, scientists need to get involved in their local communities and communicate science effectively, so that the public will begin to appreciate that science is definitely something to value, not fear.

As these "post larvae" mature they go from swimming at the surface to sitting on the seafloor. Photo courtesy of Tomas Bird and the New Zealand Marine Studies Centre

Munida larvae are common off the coast of Otago in spring and early summer, and this summer have moved into the harbour en masse where they will mature and settle to the sea floor. There they may live for 2-3 years, possibly migrating to deeper offshore habitats – that is if they are not feasted upon first.

This summer’s Munida explosion is likely to bring hundreds of tonnes of food into Otago Harbour. And this is by no means unusual. Records from the Portobello Marine Laboratory, going back to the 1950’s show that large Munida aggregations in the harbour used to occur most years, although were quite variable and did not appear once every four or five years. However, this is the first time since 1999 that there has been a significant Munida event in the harbour. The cause of this long absence is up for debate.

The New Zealand Marine Studies Centre at Portobello currently has thousands of Munida on display. Get in quick though – they are sharing their tank with some rather hungry fish…

The display at the New Zealand Marine Studies Centre, Dunedin. Photo courtesy of Tomas Bird.

This front page story reported the views of one (I repeat ONE) scientist, Peter Ridd, a physicist from James Cook University, who believes that ecologists and biologists studying the Great Barrier Reef are guilty of exaggerating threats to the reef, such as increased sedimentation, crown of thorns starfish, pollution, and temperature-induced damage called bleaching. Ridd argues that the reef is still in ‘good health’ despite public attention being drawn to these individual threats over recent years, thus affecting the credibility of marine scientists, particularly with respect to current concerns about the susceptibility of coral reefs to climate change.

It seems to me that The Australian has gone out of its way to turn this scientific debate, which is essentially one marine scientist disagreeing with a score of others, into another example of how ‘dodgy scientists’ are conspiring to delude the public into thinking that climate change is a real phenomenon.

A more in depth article further inside the newspaper “How the reef became blue again” does quite a good job of describing recent research findings by scientists at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, regarding the ability of corals to recover from bleaching events caused by increases in water temperature. However, you have to dig really deep to get to what I think is the part that is deserving of the headline:

If you would like to find out more about this incredibly scary phenomenon, I posted a rather thought-provoking film on it a couple of months ago. Even Peter Ridd thinks that ocean acidification is the single greatest threat to the Great Barrier Reef – but only those few of the 895,000 that got close to the end of the 2 page article would be aware of this!

Are the public so supersaturated with climate change stories that the media are having to infer scientific controversy to get the attention of the public? Quite possibly. How sad.

Whilst the majority of the information presented on the website is available in various scientific papers, having it all combined on a common site, and in plain English is a real leap forward in making marine issues accessible to the public. Through many many many many (you get the drift) hours of careful research, scientists from a large range of disciplines have come to conclude that climate change has, is and will continue to affect marine life.

And these implications seem to reach every kind of marine environment there is – from the open ocean to coastal reefs to estuaries. Particularly concerning are stresses upon species that provide a home for marine animals – for example, kelp forests, among which a multitude of fish and invertebrate species live, are very sensitive to changes in seawater temperature, and so are predicted to disappear from southern Australia if seawater temperatures continue to rise.

Kelp forests are predicted to disappear from Tasmania should the sea temperature continue to rise

Meanwhile in more tropical regions, such as the Great Barrier Reef, corals are suffering from multiple climate change related issues. Increased water temperature can stress corals, causing death of the individual anemone-like creatures that come together to form a coral colony. This occurrence is known as “bleaching”, and is becoming increasingly common and severe. A more recently-discovered phenomenon – ocean acidification – has the potential to devastate corals and other organisms that have skeletons made of calcium carbonate. It isn’t pleasant to think about, but if the corals disappear, so too will all of those who live on and amongst them.

Of course, with environmental science, and science in general, it is difficult to “prove” things beyond all doubt. To reflect such uncertainty, the observations, predictions and forecasts are rated with high, medium or low confidence, and I think that this is a really worthwhile addition to the site. Also included are sections on things that aren’t yet known, and require further research.

This site does make for some scary reading, and I wonder whether a section along the lines of “what you can do”, or “alternative pathways” section might lessen the blow. But then, it could be argued that individual efforts from the public would not be enough to stop the processes that are already in motion – what is needed are global-scale changes introduced by world leaders.

In the meantime, marine scientists will keep working to document our rapidly changing marine environments…

The potential for damage to coral reefs following major storm surges and tsunamis is two-fold: the initial force of the waves hitting the reef, and the subsequent delivery of huge amounts of sediment and debris onto the reef as the wave retreats and during rainfall in the following weeks.

Using field tests, scientists at the ARC Centre for Excellence in Coral Reef Studies have demonstrated that the shape of the coral influences how vulnerable it is to damage by large waves. For example, table-topped corals (those with a broad top and attached to the reef by a stalk) are more prone to being overturned by a large wave than those that are mounded or branched. Location matters too, with corals on the front and crest of the reef where the waves break being more prone to damage by large waves than those situated on the top and back sides of the reef.

Arguably the greatest tsunami-associated threat to corals is posed by sediment and debris that is carried from the land as the waves retreat. Sediment can smother and even bury corals, leading to suffocation of the coral polyps. Extensive mechanical damage and scouring can result from debris such as building materials, machinery and cars getting pounded onto the reef.

Initial surveys of coral reefs along the west coast of Thailand following the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 recorded mass destruction of corals. However, despite these initial concerns, repeat surveys in the following months found that the damage, although severe in small patches, was generally not as bad as first feared. This anomaly was due to much of the coral initially recorded as dead having in fact recovered. On the Island of Banda Aceh at the northern tip of Sumatara, scientists were in a unique position of being able to make before and after comparisons of reef health, as they had surveyed the reefs prior to the tsunami. The research team, led by Dr Andrew Baird at the ARC Centre for Excellence in Coral Reef Studies reported a remarkable resilience of coral communities to the tsunami waves. The damage observed was considerably less than that caused by destructive fishing practices (e.g. dynamite fishing) and coral harvesting, and was also considered to be significantly less than that resulting from hurricanes, due to differences in the distribution of wave energy in the water column.

I am not aware of any similar surveys being carried out in areas affected by the most recent tsunami (if you know of any please tell me!), but these experiences from the 2004 tsunami seem to suggest that the long-term impacts of the tsunami waves on coral reefs may not be all that bad. It seems plausible that those reefs in good health prior to the tsunami may experience a faster recovery than those already suffering from bleaching, grazing crown of thorns starfish, or destructive fishing practises.

The Ministry received 26 submissions from stakeholders, most representing large organizations such as the NZ Marine Sciences Society (270+ scientists), the NZ Recreational Fishing Council and multiple iwi. In very general terms, the submissions from those in the fishing industry supported the introduction of the species to the QMS. And the majority of submissions from scientists, environmental and other groups were in agreement with them – perhaps not a huge surprise given that the alternative to QMS introduction was the creation of an open-access fishery! Where these two sides differed in opinion was in size of the future Total Allowable Catch. Industry argued for “a sustainable level”. Nearly everyone else argued that with a complete lack of scientific information, the only guaranteed sustainable level is zero. And the masses raise a very valid point – after all, the overall objective of the QMS is to help ensure the sustainable utilisation of fisheries resources…

Could kelp harvesters like this soon be working along our coasts? Image: http://w3.shorecrest.org

The Ministry will begin a process of stakeholder consultation early next year before setting Total Allowable Catch limits for attached giant kelp in fisheries management areas 3 (East Coast of the South Island) and 4 (extending out to the Chatham Islands). It will be a very interesting process to observe – given the lack of biomass estimates, location-specific growth rates and knowledge about the ability of kelp to recover from canopy removal, it is difficult to imagine just how the Ministry will go about calculating a “sustainable level of harvest”.