An Insight In To The Northeast Australia LME

Features of the Ecosystem

Introduction

The Northeast Australia Marine Ecosystem is a Large Marine Ecosystem (LME) situated north east of the Australian marine border. It specifically lies off the coast of the State of Queensland. The ecosystem largely extends from Papua New Guinea in the north with Solomon Islands and Vanuatu as the closer land masses to the east.

Physical Environment

Like any other ecosystem, the Northeast Australia has notable coastal defences that form prominent features along its coast line and in the ecosystem. These defences include Mangrove, Sand banks and Coral reefs.

The Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is part of the reef area and has since been a marine protected area (MPA). It is a Marine Park as declared by the Australian Government in 1975. covering 344,400 km2 it extends from a point south of the northern tip of Queensland to a point just north of Bundaberg. It is the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem with approximately 3000 coral reefs, 600 continental islands, 300 coral cays and inshore mangrove islands approximated to 150. Its width is between 60 and 250 kilometres in width with an average depth of 35 metres in its inshore waters. The outer reefs and continental slopes of the reef areas extend down to depths of more than 2000 metres (GBRMPA, 2018). The area is also zoned for management with key areas being health and resilience for improving productivity.

Goods and Services of the Ecosystem and their Impact

The presence of the goods and services in the ecosystem while benefiting human and animal population within and outside the ecosystem has placed pressures on the ecosystem. Different threats have yielded different results within the ecosystem. It is equally important to note and ascertain the impact the ecosystem has on the human population in terms of providing what is perceived as essential to the existence of the communities. Fisheries is an important economic to the coastal communities who also directly benefit from food especially seafood from the ecosystem. However, due to poor nutrients there has been a decline in fish catch over the years. The figure below illustrates the importance of fishing. Other economic activities such as marine transportation, tourism and the port activities has greatly influenced the economies while relating to human impact. As any other ocean, the ocean area (coral sea) is important in regulating weather and climate.

Human Impact

Human activity particularly occasioned by particular interest to the barrier reef and nature driven necessities among other the need for nourishment, has had heavy impact on the ecosystem. Loss of biological diversity in ecosystem can be attributed to the pace of and scale of human population (Crist, Mora, & Engelman, 2017).

Specific Impact

Plastic and Related Material Debris

It is for a fact that plastics and related materials produced from polymers are a constant threat to the marine environment and marine life (Whitting, 1998). However, it is not specific to Northeast Australia but rather a global phenomenon (Reisser, et al. , 2013). Reisser, et al (2013) note the level of plastic contamination in surface waters of Australia are similar to other areas albeit in lower concentrations. Derraik (2002) estimates the amount of plastic as 60-80% constituent of the word’s litter while Avio, et al (2016) argues that 10% end ups in oceans

The hazards of plastic do not only include the physical plastic but all other hazards as a result of the presence of the macro plastics not limited to entanglements, leading to suffocation or drowning of marine animals, physical obstructions in throats or digestive tracts, in addition to the plastic harbouring unwanted organisms and chemical elements thereby acting as a vector of transport for both invasive species and chemicals (Koelmans, Gouin, Thompson, Wallace, & Arthur, 2014). Microplastics such as the ones described here have the potential to affect organisms ranging from megafauna to small fish and zooplankton (Derraik, 2002) (Andrady, 2011) (Avio, Gorbil, & Regoli, 2016). Plastics are largely grouped according to the plastic polymers and the additives which are combined to give each plastic its distinctive characteristics (Avio, Gorbil, & Regoli, 2016). Common polymers include polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), polyvinylchloride (PVC), polyamide (PA), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyvinyl alcohol(PVA) (Avio, Gorbil, & Regoli, 2016). Results from Reisser, et al (2013) shows that plastic concentration per Km2 was between 1500-43195 pieces.

Fishing and Fisheries Resources

Fishing along the Australian coast has its own effects in terms of the plastic debris which makes approximately 2% (Hardesty, Lawson, van der Velde, Lansdell, & Wilcox, 2017). While the impact and the status of fishing in the Northeast LME is of particular interest to, fish abundance, biomass and species richness is a subject of concern not only to Australia but specifically within the Coral Sea (Edgar, Ceccarelli, Stuart-Smith, & Cooper, 2017). Overfishing has been a major problem not only to the LME but also worldwide. While overfishing arises within the legal confines, it is important to note that it has adverse effect. Illegal Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fishing has largely been a concern within the LME and in general the Australian waters, however Illegal Foreign Fishing (IFF) pose a far much greater risk within the larger Australian waters (Pascoe, Okey, & Griffiths, 2008) (Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 2016) While it is true of over exploitation, it is agreeable that humans are responsible for destruction of the habitat, and in turn without spawning and nursery areas restocking naturally has been impaired. Other actors include invasive species and Marine pollution through, oil and eutrophication.

Tourism

Tourism by large even on land is a source of great pollution due to introduction of debris to a relatively small area during a relatively short period. This when close to a water mass has an almost immediate effect to the debris released in to the waters. While the UNEP report (2009) attributes 20% of total debris load in waters to originate through land sources, it is rather a reality that this varies from place to place depending on many factors including areas with high recreational boating, commercial fishing, shipping activities, nearby urban populations (Wilson & Verlis, 2017) and where proper controls have been enforced. The impact of tourism while is conspicuous and threatening to the great barrier reef (Wilson & Verlis, 2017) is not entirely restricted to the reef area but it is noticeable within the larger ecosystem area. The effects are not entirely the presence of the physical plastic debris. Plastics also act as a vector for invasive species.

Port and shipping

The LME region is home to 12 ports. The ports majorly lie within the Great Barrier Reef. The building of the port has essentially brought changes to the environment i. e. ecosystem and the coastal areas. The construction, installation and maintenance of port infrastructure of a port especially pile driving affects marine life. Dredging in its operations creates disturbances in addition to displaced dredged material being hazard to marine life. With the existence of the ports, there is increased human traffic to the area and shipping possess threats to the environment including but not limited to noise pollution, oil pollution, garbage, air pollution from noxious gases, sewage and invasive species. This transportation of organisms from one area to another has been a key concern. Invasive species has been primarily though to be transported by ballast water, however other studies indicate that hull transportation and plastics also do transport invasive organisms and microorganisms.

Human Hinterland Activities

Human activities on land have a great impact on the precipitation of threats to a marine environment. Research by (Epstein, Templeman, & Kingsford, 2016) done in sites along sites in Cleveland Bay, Townsville Australia, while testing for a different hypothesis actually showed prevalence of uptake of metal pollutants along the coast due to runoffs and adjacent land use.

Cumulative Impact

While it is prudent to analyse and evaluate specific threats to the ecosystem, it is important to understand the holistic threat as a result of the different specific human impact on the environment. Climate change has been a major effect in marine ecosystems. Climate change is a collective eventual effect that is brought about by more than one impacting component to the environment. Relative to human population growth (Halpern, et al. , 2015), human uses are crowding the ocean space (Crowder, et al. , 2006) and with increased migration to the coastal areas in search of resources, there is heavy pressure both at the individual and cumulative levels to the marine environment (Halpern, et al. , 2008) and as such endangering the ecosystem. These pressure are not only peculiar to the LME but its increment is also felt globally (Butchart, et al. , 2011) (Halpern, et al. , 2015). Recent publications have indicated coral deaths along the LME’s coast. The area has been receiving excessively warm water and in turn the effect has been the death of the algae that sustain the tropical coral causing it to turn white. (Mackenzie, 2017). This bleaching phenomenon has been a concern with reports indicating the worst recording of bleaching in 2016 estimated at 30% (GBRMPA, 2017). This has however been observed to be a recurrent phenomenon with substantive recoding in 2017 (Mackenzie, 2017). Bleaching in all cases doesn’t impose death sentence, as resilient corals are able to invigorate when factors such as temperature are normalized relatively quickly and human impact is lessened (NOAA, 2016).

Conclusion

It is very important to understand marine ecosystem and the interaction of different actors within the ecosystem. While some impacts are mostly conspicuous over a short, over a long period of time, understanding the cumulative impact of all the actors that affect the ecosystem is paramount. While numerous surveys and studies yielded indication that tourism is responsible for direct threat to the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem and in general within the Coral Sea, it is also equally important to realise the effect of human activities from the hinterland as a source of plastic and other debris eventually finding its way into the ecosystem.