A/Prof. Scott Ling1, German Soler1, Neville Barrett1, Ken Ridgway2, John Keane1, Dave Charlton1, Craig Johnson1, Mick Baron3, Karen Gowlett-Holmes3, Craig Sanderson1, Simon Brooks3, Scott Bennett1, Beth Strain1, Cayne Layton1, Jeff Wright1, Catriona Hurd1, Rocky de Nys4, Masa Tatsumi4, Sam Elsom4, Rick Stuart-Smith1, Elizabeth Oh1, Antonia Cooper1, Graham Edgar1
1Institute For Marine And Antarctic Science, Battery Point, Australia, 2CSIRO Marine Research, Battery Point, Australia, 3Eaglehawk Dive Centre, Eaglehawk Neck, Australia, 4Sea Forest Limited, Triabunna, Australia
Global change is causing phase-shifts from healthy to collapsed reefs across temperate systems worldwide. On the rapidly warming coasts of Tasmania, subtidal monitoring of rocky reef ecosystems reveals cascading changes over the past 30-years. From widespread loss of giant kelp forests to the formation of extensive sea urchin barrens, the transformation of local reef-scapes has been profound. In this presentation, I will highlight long-term changes in reef fishes and invertebrates and explore the transition between surface-canopy giant kelp forests and lower-canopy kelp beds, and ultimately collapse to persistent urchin barren grounds. I will contrast monitoring trends inside/ outside marine protected areas and supplement this with long-term spatially extensive field experiments that reveal the ecological mechanisms, including reduced natural predation and range-extending herbivores plus altered dominance hierarchies of competing kelps, that are driving phase-shift and creating feedbacks locking-in alternative states. I will conclude by discussing how our collective monitoring and experimental understanding is now being used to reinstate critical ecosystem functioning safeguarding temperate reefs against collapse, and how this combined approach to understanding natural history is leading to important opportunities for scaling-up ecosystem restoration.
Presentation Slides – Scott Ling
Biography:
Scott is an ARC Future Fellow at Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies who focusses his research on collapse and recovery of reef ecosystems. His research is founded on natural history observations and in situ experiments spanning 24-years and >3,000 research dives. Growing up in Tasmania, he continues to document the vast changes occurring across this coastline while increasing scope across temperate and tropical systems. Scott seeks to understand the mechanisms of phase-shifts and tipping-point dynamics towards defining the existence of pre-emptive signals to help avoid collapse, and conversely, to inform where/ when restoration efforts are likely to achieve recovery.
