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Seagrass friendly moorings trialled in Queensland

11 February 2010, My Sunshine Coast (Aust)

New boat moorings which do not damage seagrass are being trialled in Queensland.  Minister for Primary Industries, Fisheries and Rural and Regional Queensland Tim Mulherin said the new moorings are being installed in several locations in Moreton Bay. 

"Traditional 'block and tackle' mooring designs drag on the sea floor killing seagrass, algae and other marine plants," Mr Mulherin said.

"The heavy mooring chains can scour a 'halo' or circle where no marine plants grow. "These halos can be up to 1000m2 per vessel in size and in some cases are clearly visible from the air. 

"Destroying sections of seagrass in this way can harm fish, prawn, turtles and dugong populations."  Mr Mulherin said there were three types of environmentally-friendly moorings being trialed.

"These moorings minimise the area of disturbance of the mooring anchor system, and keep the vessel and mooring chain off the seabed at all st ages of the tide. "For example, the Seagrass Friendly Mooring System uses a moveable arm raised off the seafloor which is attached to a fixed anchor.

"After a small amount of disturbance during installation, these moorings allow seagrasses and other marine plants, and soft-sediment animals to remain, live and grow uninhibited.

Member for Redcliffe Lillian van Litsenburg said this project recognised the high ecological and economical importance of Moreton Bay.

"It is estimated that Moreton Bay's commercial fisheries alone generate $33 million gross value of production.

"The bay is one of the State's most popular recreational fishing areas."

"In addition to the commercial value, the bay also supports a healthy population of turtles, dugongs and wader birds of national and international conservation significance.

"These values are protected by the Moreton Bay Marine Park, a haven for wildlife and people on Brisbane's doors tep," Lillian said.

The trial will be conducted for two years in sensitive seagrass areas at:

• Tangalooma Island Resort - Moreton Island,
• One Mile - North Stradbroke Island,
• Point Halloran near Victoria Point, and
• Dalpura Bay - Macleay Island.

If the trial is successful it may be expanded to other parts of Queensland's coast.

The environmentally-friendly moorings are being trialed through a partnership between SEQ Catchments, the Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation, Tangalooma Island Resort, the Department of Environment and Resource Management, Maritime Safety Queensland, University of Queensland and Seagrass Watch.

Moreton Bay Seafood Industry Association and Moreton Bay Access Alliance are also supporting the project.

For more on Anchors and impacts on seagrass, read Issue Seagrass-Watch Issue 32 March 2008

Source and article: Click Here

Coastal habitats may sequester 50 times more carbon than tropical forests by area

16 November, Mongabay.com ( USA )

Highly endangered coastal habitats are incredibly effective in sequestering carbon and locking it away in soil, according to a new paper in a report by the IUCN. The paper attests that coastal habitats—such as mangroves, sea grasses, and salt marhses—sequester as much as 50 times the amount of carbon in their soil per hectare as tropical forest.

"The key difference between these coastal habitats and forests is that mangroves, seagrasses and the plants in salt marshes are extremely efficient at burying carbon in the sediment below them where it can stay for centuries or even millennia. Tropical forests are not as effective at transferring carbon into the soil below them, instead storing most carbon in the living plants and litter," explains the paper's author and Conservation International’s Marine Climate Change Director, Dr. Emily Pidgeon. "But coastal ecosystems keep sequestering large amounts of carbon throughout their life cycle. Equally, the majority of carbon stays locked away in the soil rather than the plant, so only a relatively small amount is released when the plant dies."

This capacity for coastal environments to lock away carbon for thousands of years has largely been ignored in accounts of the global carbon cycle, according to the paper, even though the amount of carbon they are responsible for storing is very high.

Coastal habitats with vegetation "[contribute] about half of the total carbon sequestration in ocean sediments even though they account for less than 2 percent of the ocean surface,” Pidgeon writes, explaining that much of this is capacity is due to the fact that coastal vegetation usually spreads deeper below ground than it grows above with some plants going as deep as eight meters.

According to Pidgeon, salt marshes, mangroves, and seagrasses store ten times more carbon in their soils per hectare than temperate forests and fifty times more than tropical forests.

"The simple implication of this is that the longterm sequestration of carbon by one square kilometer of mangrove area is equivalent to that occurring in fifty square kilometers of tropical forest. Hence, while relatively small in area, coastal habitats are extremely valuable for their longterm carbon sequestration capacity," Pidgeon writes in the paper.

Pidgeon believes that even these remarkable figures may be underestimations, since the accumulation rates do not take into account tidal pumps that move carbon from coastal environments into the open ocean. No studies have yet determined just how much of an affect these tidal pumps have on the carbon cycle.

However, according to Pidgeon, these findings should not diminish the importance of preserving forests in mitigating climate change.

"The sheer size of the world’s forests makes them essential for carbon sequestration. However, the immense carbon sequestration capacity of these coastal habitats has been almost completely ignored and may also be a vital component in global efforts to mitigate climate change," she says.

Yet, coastal habitats are vanishing with incredible speed. According to the paper, 20 percent of mangroves have been lost in the past thirty years. In total, seagrasses have lost 29 percent of their historical distribution. These ecosystems are being converted for agriculture, aquaculture (such as shrimp farming), development, and tourism. The massive and continuing conversion of these ecosystems is having a big impact on our planet.

"The total annual loss of mangroves and seagrasses has the longterm carbon sequestration capacity of a tropical forest area similar to the annual deforestation rate in the Amazon," writes Pidgeon.

Coastal environments are not just important for carbon sequestration. Mangroves provide a number of vital ecosystem services, according to Pidgeon, such as protection from extreme weather and natural disasters like tsunamis and important habitat for natural fish nurseries, providing an important source of food for local communities.

"Not only do these ecosystems help us to remove carbon from the atmosphere, but they are also very important as an adaptation tool to help some of the world’s most vulnerable people to avoid the worst impacts of climate change," writes Pidgeon. "It is imperative that we take steps to protect them immediately."

Download report from http://earthmind.net/wetcarbon/docs/iucn-2009-management-natural-coastal-carbon-sinks.pdf

For more on Carbon: seagrass, sequestration & stewardship, read Issue Seagrass-Watch Issue 36 March 2009

Source and article: Click Here

Loss of Ocean Seagrass Beds Accelerating Due to Human Activity

14 November 2009, Natural News.com (Phoenix,AZ, USA)

As critical for ocean life as coral reefs but less well known, seagrass beds around the planet are also in sharp decline, according to a study conducted by researchers from Australia, Spain and the United States, and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Seagrass beds are at least as economically and ecologically important as tropical forests or coral reefs," said co-author James Fourqurean of Florida International University.

Seagrass meadows provide important habitat and nurseries for large numbers of shellfish and fish, which in turn draws larger marine life to these areas to feed. They also help prevent coastal erosion by stabilizing sediments on the ocean bottom, and filter out many of the wastes that flow into the ocean from the land.

Yet according to the study, the rate of annual seagrass decline has leaped from 1 percent per year before 1940 to 7 percent per year today. An estimated 58 percent of all seagrass meadows around the world are currently in a state of decline. Since 1879, a full 29 percent, or 19,690 square miles, of the meadows have disappeared.

"Globally, we lose a seagrass meadow the size of a soccer field every thirty minutes," said co-author William Dennison of the University of Maryland.

Development has been the primary driving force behind sea grass destruction. Forty-five percent of the world's population lives along the coast, and the industrial revolution led directly to sea grass declines in North America and Europe due to water pollution and outright dredging of sea grass meadows. The major areas of sea grass decline are now along coasts of the Pacific and Indian oceans.

"Seagrasses are disappearing because they live in the same kind of environments that attract people," Fourqurean said. "They live in shallow areas protected from large storm waves, and they are especially prevalent in bays and around river mouths."

Global warming is expected to exacerbate sea grass decline due to ocean warming and rising sea levels.

Source and article: Click Here

Marine plant life holds the secret to preventing global warming

14 October 2009, Frank Pope, Ocean Correspondent, TimesOnline (United Kingdom)

Life in the ocean has the potential to help to prevent global warming, according to a report published today.

Marine plant life sucks 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, but most of the plankton responsible never reaches the seabed to become a permanent carbon store.

Mangrove forests, salt marshes and seagrass beds are a different matter. Although together they cover less than 1 per cent of the world’s seabed, they lock away well over half of all carbon to be buried in the ocean floor. They are estimated to store 1,650 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year — nearly half of global transport emissions — making them one of the most intense carbon sinks on Earth.

Their capacity to absorb the emissions is under threat, however: the habitats are being lost at a rate of up to 7 per cent a year, up to 15 times faster than the tropical rainforests. A third have already been lost.

Halting their destruction could be one of the easiest ways of reducing future emissions, says report, Blue Carbon, a UN collaboration.

With 50 per cent of the world’s population living within 65 miles of the sea, human pressures on nearshore waters are powerful. Since the 1940s, parts of Asia have lost up to 90 per cent of their mangrove forests, robbing both spawning fish and local people of sanctuary from storms.

The salt marshes near estuaries and deltas have suffered a similar fate as they are drained to make room for development. Rich in animal life, they harbour a huge biomass of carbon-fixing vegetation. Seagrass beds often raise the level of the seabed by up to three metres as they bury mats of dead grass but turbid water is threatening their access to sunlight.

“We already know that marine ecosystems are multi-trillion-dollar assets linked to sectors such as tourism, coastal defence, fisheries and water purification services. Now it is emerging that they are natural allies against climate change,” said Achin Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General.

The potential contribution of blue carbon sinks has been ignored up to now, says the report, which was a collaboration between the United Nations Environment Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organisation and Unesco. Accurate figures for the extent of these habitats are hard to obtain, and may be more than twice the lower estimates used in the report.

“The carbon burial capacity of marine vegetated habitats is phenomenal, 180 times greater than the average burial rate in the open ocean,” say the authors. As a result they lock away between 50 and 70 per cent of the organic carbon in the ocean.

To protect them the authors suggest that a Blue Carbon Fund be launched to help developing nations to protect the habitats. Oceanic carbon sinks should also be traded in the same fashion as terrestrial forests, they say. Together with the UN’s scheme to reduce deforestation, they could deliver up to 25 per cent of emission reductions needed to keep global warming below 2C (36F).

Christian Nellemann, the editor of the report said: “On current trends they [ecosystems] may be all largely lost within a couple of decades.”

Download report from http://www.grida.no/publications/rr/blue-carbon/

For more on Carbon: seagrass, sequestration & stewardship, read Issue Seagrass-Watch Issue 36 March 2009

Souce and article: Click Here

Qld approves new 'putrid' Barrier Reef run-off laws

09 October 2009, ABC online( Australia)

Queensland's Parliament has passed legislation last night to reduce run-off from farming land on to the Great Barrier Reef.

The State Government wants to halve the amount of fertiliser and pesticides entering the reef in four years requiring some landholders to change their practices. Those who do not cooperate face a maximum fine of $30,000. The Opposition was angry that earlier parliamentary debate was guillotined and fought unsuccessfully to amend the Bill until late last night.

Queensland Sustainability Minister Kate Jones says the legislation will be phased in from January. "I will now allow them [farmers] - in regard to chemical application - to have an extra nine months to get that in place," she said.

But Liberal National Party (LNP) MP Rob Messenger says it is a deal with the green lobby. "If there was ever proof of an unprecedented level of corruption, it is this putrid piece of legislation," he said.

North Queensland MP Shane Knuth says farmers have been demonised. "This issue of nutrients of farmers that are killing the Great Barrier Reef - the evidence of the scientists proves that it's just a fable, it's a myth," he said. "The Bligh Government's approach in demonising farmers to seek to reward the radical green extremists."

However, Labor MP Jason O'Brien told Parliament that the State Government values agriculture. "We are not saying that farmers have not been stewards of the land adjoining the Great Barrier Reef for generations and have not managed that land responsibly and diligently," he said. "It is the farmers themselves who acknowledge that not all farmers apply the same sustainable techniques."

Read more Reef Rescue MMP results in Issue 35 Seagrass-Watch News: Click Here

Source and article: Click Here

Blue Carbon Report to Highlight the Importance of Healthy Oceans

06 October 2009 , United Nations Environment Programme (Cape Town)

The world's oceans, seas and marine ecosystems, such as seagrass, salt marshes and coastal wetlands, are daily absorbing and removing large quantities of carbon from the atmosphere. They are a crucial - and perhaps overlooked - natural ally in strategies to combat climate change.

On Wednesday, 14 October 2009 at 10.30am, a report will be launched at the Cape Town International Conference Centre, South Africa that illustrates how the ocean's carbon capture and storage systems are being undermined by human activity, thereby harming their ability to 'sequester' greenhouse gas emissions.

The Blue Carbon report, compiled in collaboration with the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), puts some hard figures on the carbon capturing potential of the marine environment and on the impact of marine degradation on climate change.

It also outlines the way markets might begin paying developing countries for conserving and enhancing the marine environment's carbon capture and storage services (CCS) and the links between healthy oceans and adaptation to climate change.

Currently, several developed countries are considering spending billions of dollar on CCS at power stations while the CCS services of natural systems, such as the seas and oceans, are tested and probably more cost effective.

The report is launched some 60 days ahead of the crucial UN climate convention meeting in Copenhagen.

For more on Carbon: seagrass, sequestration & stewardship, read Issue Seagrass-Watch Issue 36 March 2009

Source and article: Click Here

Clumpy find of underwater kind

09 September 2009, Fraser Coast Chronicle (Hervey Bay, Australia)

Clumps of seagrass washed up along Hervey Bay's beaches have sparked both worry and interest among residents.

Julie Stout, who has lived lived in the Bay for 16 years, noticed the seagrass on an afternoon walk and immediately thought of the region's dugongs.

But there is no need to worry, said Queenland Fisheries principal scientist Len McKenzie.

Mr McKenzie, who heads the Seagrass-Watch program, said what washed ashore was wrack- the dead leaves of seagrass. He said that when the grass grew quickly, it's old leaves fell off and were replaced by new ones.

The natural annual process generally happens from September to November during the main growing season. "It would only be a problem if it happened eariler in the year or after floods," he said.

There is no eed to worry about dugongs either, because they eat what is called rhizome-the below ground seagrass that is full of sugars and start: "Dugongs eat about 30 to 40 kilos of seagrass a day," Mr McKenzie said.

Ms Stout feared fishing trawlers had ripped out the grass, but Mr McKenzie said that was not the case because most grass grows close to shore