Features Of The Northeast Australia Marine Ecosystem
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. Its conspicuous feature, the great barrier reef is found, it is bounded to the east by the Coral Sea. To the by the Torres Strait, which separates, covering an area of 1. 3 million km2 of which 28. 06% is protected
Physical Features of the Ecosystem
Like any other ecosystem, the Northeast Australia has notable coastal defences that form prominent features along its coast line and in the ecosystem.
The Great Barrier Reef
The great barrier reef is part of the reef area and has since been a marine protected area (MPA). It covers 344,400 km2. Extending from a point south of the northern tip of Queensland in north-eastern Australia 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.
- The area is also zoned for management.
- Goods and Services of the Ecosystem
- Impact of The Goods and Services
- Human Impact
Human activity 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). This is particularly occasioned by particular interest to the barrier reef and nature driven necessities among other the need for nourishment.
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 including the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Maine. It is also found in areas subject to subtropical gyres and in the Mediterranean Sea 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 grouped differently. They 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. This further exposes that the officially recorded hazard of plastics to Australian species and ecological communities were narrower (Reisser, et al. , 2013) as small plastics are in essence a type of harmful marine debris (Reisser, et al. , 2013) (Rochman, et al. , 2013).
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).
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 debris 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, relatively low nearby urban populations (Wilson & Verlis, 2017) and where proper controls have been enforced.
Port and shipping
The LME region is home to 12 ports. 4. 1. 5. Human Hinterland ActivitiesHuman 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 however is not relative to one spectrum of events but rather 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 which thereby puts heavy pressure both at the individual and cumulative levels to the marine environment (Halpern, et al. , 2008). and as such endangering the ecosystem in its entirety. It is important to note that 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.
Coral bleaching has also been a major issue. 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%. This has however been observed to be a recurrent phenomenon with substantive recoding in 2017 (Mackenzie, 2017). 5. Conclusion
