Shellfish reefs, formed by oysters or mussels
in or near estuaries, have declined by up 99% since British colonisation
Wed 14 Feb 2018 17.00 GMTLast
modified on Wed 14 Feb 2018 22.41 GMT
Marine scientists are lobbying the federal
government to ensure protection for Australia’s most endangered – but least
known – ocean ecosystem.
Shellfish reefs, formed by millions of
oysters or mussels clustering together in or near the mouths of estuaries, have
declined by up 99% since British colonisation.
Yet they are not formally recognised as a
threatened ecosystem under Australian environmental law.
A study led by the Nature Conservancy
Australia and published in the peer-reviewed open access journal Plos One on
Thursday found that the number of reefs formed by Australian flat oysters,
Ostrea angasi, had declined 99% from 118 found in historical records to just
one, in Tasmania’s Georges Bay.
The number of reefs formed by rock oysters,
Saccostrea glomerata, which are found on coastal banks around Sydney, declined
90% from 60 known historical locations to six surviving reefs.
It is even more drastic than the decline in
the Great Barrier Reef, which suffered
unprecedented mass bleaching events in 2016 and 2017 that are believed to have
killed up to half of the coral, and the shrinking of kelp forests, which
have declined 90%
off the coast of Western Australia due to successive marine heatwaves.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!