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The UTS Fish Ecology lab has had an eventful and successful year in 2014! While we sadly farewelled Kerryn after a decade at UTS, Sam Philp has ably stepped up to the plate as lab tech officer. The departure of David Feary (Univ Nottingham) and Fowler (NSW DPI Fisheries) has also left quite a gap, but both are gainfully employed and great contacts for the future! Grant success in the form of an Ian Potter award and several Industry research grants, plus an impressive swag of lab publications have added to the good progress we are making in research. We have been assisted by a number of lab and field volunteers. I also want to particularly thank all lab members for support given to me during my bereavement this year, it really helped! And especially to Selma for her help in eroding the mountain of marking that arrived at the wrong time! I hope this short newsletter is the first of many (to summarise events in the previous quarter), it's a great way to summarise what we are doing, for ourselves and also to others. If you didn’t contribute to it please stand by for the next call for info, probably around February or so. Hope everyone has a break over the Xmas period, and has a great 2015. Cheers Dave
Recent Work David Booth & Sam Philp Habitat enhancement of boating infrastructure to promote fish recruitment (project funded by Transport for NSW) Public floating pontoons throughout Sydney Harbour, Pittwater, Botany Bay and Port Hacking used to attach simple habitat structures (milk crates) underneath in an attempt to provide shelter and promote larval fish recruitment in an attempt to make pontoons more ‘fish friendly’ at minimal cost. Crates have been rolled out throughout Sydney Harbour, Pittwater and Botany Bay with a second stage looking at Port Hacking and a reef-‐plate unit comparison (Reef Design Lab ©) (Figure 2)
Figure 1: Dave with crate habitat structure at Andrew (boy) Charlton Pool.
Figure 2: Reef plates to be trialled
Figure 3: Fish already curious re milk crate reefs in situ
December
2014
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Recent Papers and Grants (Received June-‐Dec 2014) Transport for NSW ($30,000): Habitat enhancement of boating infrastructure to promote fish recruitment
SHELL-‐TODD ($40,000) “Assessment of the fish and invertebrate communities associated with gas platforms off the northwest coast of New Zealand Paloma Matis APA Award
Papers since Sept 2014 1. Fowler A, Macreadie P, Booth D (in press) "Should we 'reef' obsolete oil platforms?" Proc National Academy of Sciences
2. McGowan, N., Fowler, A. M., Parkinson, K., Bishop, D. P., Ganio, K., Doble, P. A., Booth DJ (2014). Beyond the transect: An alternative microchemical imaging method for fine scale analysis of trace elements in fish otoliths during early life. The Science of the Total Environment, 494-495, 177–186. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2014.05.1
3. Thomson ACG, York PH, Smith TM, Sherman C, Booth DJ, Keough MJ, Ross DJ, Macreadie PI (2014) Seagrass Viviparous Propagules as a Potential Long-Distance Dispersal Mechanism. Estuaries and Coasts DOI 10.1007/s12237-014-9850-1
4. Adriana Vergés1,2,5⇑, Peter D. Steinberg1,5,6, Mark E. Hay7, Alistair G. B. Poore2,5, Alexandra H. Campbell1,2,5, Enric Ballesteros8, Kenneth L. Heck Jr9, David J. Booth5,10, Melinda A. Coleman11, David A. Feary5,10, Will Figueira5,12, Tim Langlois13, Ezequiel M. Marzinelli1,5, Toni Mizerek5,14, Peter J. Mumby15, Yohei Nakamura16, Moninya Roughan3,5, Erik van Sebille4, Alex Sen Gupta4, Dan A. Smale13,17, Fiona Tomas18,19, Thomas Wernberg13 and Shaun K. Wilson13,20 (2014) The tropicalization of temperate marine ecosystems: climate-mediated changes in herbivory and community
phase shifts. Proc. R. Soc. B 20140846. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.0846
5. Donelson JM, McCormick MI, Booth DJ, Munday PL (2014) Reproductive Acclimation to Increased Water Temperature in a Tropical Reef Fish. PLoS ONE 9(5): e97223. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0097223
Conference and grant update ACRS 2014: Big UTS presence, Fish Ecology Lab 5 contributed papers, and 3 members on ACRS Council. ASFB/ISSESR Conference 2015, August UTS
Grants
http://www.australiancoralreefsociety.org/student-‐awards http://www.amsa.asn.au/students/international.php http://www.ecolsoc.org.au/students/awards-‐and-‐grants/jill-‐landsberg http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/managing-‐the-‐reef/how-‐the-‐reefs-‐managed/science-‐and-‐research/science-‐for-‐management-‐awards
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Thesis completions PhD submitted (Dr!) Hayden Beck “Tropical fish recruitment success varies among temperate reef habitats, potentially impacting their range expansion” Hayden says: “Following submitting my thesis for examination in November, I have been working as an environmental advisor for a dredging project in WA. I will be giving an oral presentation of my thesis on 17th Dec at UTS.” Honours Students Alyssa Kanyasi: Age, growth and movement of the shortfin mako shark, Isurus oxyrinchus, in Australia waters STOP PRESS-‐ 1ST CLASS HONOURS!! CONGRATS!! Graeme Poleweski: The potential of tropical fish to persist in current and future winter sea temperatures in south-‐eastern Australia STOP PRESS-‐ 1ST CLASS HONOURS!! CONGRATS!!
Undergraduate Research Project Students Alice Pidd: Independent and combined effects of temperature and salinity on estuarine species, Enoplosus armatus, endemic to Australia: Implications of a changing climate Jonathan Lee: Climate Change Temperature and Salinity Implications on Enoplosus Armatus Fish in Botany Bay New South Wales Justin Tierney: Influence of developmental water temperature on growth, body condition and energy allocation of tropical vagrant reef fish with focus on Abedefduf vaigiensis Shannen Smith: Determining coastal migratory behaviour of Mugil cephalus on the NSW coast using otolith microchemistry Seminars given • ACRS- 5 Fish Ecology Lab Researhcrs (Donelson, Klanten, Booth, Matis, O’Connor)
• David Booth: Northside forum Great Barrier Reef: http://northsideforum.org.au/forum-31-great-barrier-reef-nov-1/
• David Booth: Central coast discovery centre Public lecture series
• David Booth: Keynote Address, DECOMM world workshop Kuala Lumpur November 2014: Environmental aspects of oil rig decommissioning
Media (incomplete)
• BBC Scotland http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04d51qd • BBC world http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-29705818 • Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2014/nov/05/small-fish-in-a-big-pond-the-plight-of-the-lemon-damsel-fish • ABC overnight on sustainable seafood http://www.abc.net.au/overnights/stories/s4129626.htm • Other press: SMH, Merimbula Monitor, Daily Telegraph
Project updates Booth • Vagrant fish: annual field surveys start soon, year 15!! • Deep sea: new work on video archive footage with Shell-Todd, possibly more with BHP. • Biotic connectivity ARC Linkage grant
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Donelson
“I am currently 2 years into my research fellowship at UTS. The past year has been spent running a large scale experiment on fish collected from the Northern GBR. It included adults and recent recruits of up to 15 species of coral reef fish. Currently I am beginning to analyse the data collected from this experiment. In early 2014 Dave and I had the following publication published at PLoS One on the ability for a reef damselfish to improve reproductive performance when reared at elevated temperature for its entire life (Donelson et al 2014-see below). In late 2014 a team that I am a part of was successful in a large grant from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology to investigate the transcription program and the epigenome of transgenerational acclimation to climate change in reef fishes.”
Klanten “I recently finished some outstanding lab work at the PC2 Molecular Laboratories at SIMS in Chowder Bay, Mossman. This involved amplifying 3 mitochondrial loci (cytochrome b, control region and cytochrome oxidase I) for two vagrant species:
• Pomacentrus coelestis • Abudefduf vaigiensis
In total 207 samples were sequenced and are currently edited for analyses and publication. Preliminary results of one vagrant’s movement, Chaetodon auriga (butterflyfish), along the East Coast of Australia via the EAC (East Australian Current) demonstrated the incredible ability of recruits (approx. 3-‐8 cm long, very young fish) to ‘travel’ more than 1356.40 nautical miles (~2500 km), or along a gradient of 220 of latitude (from Lizard Island, North QLD to Merimbula, southern NSW). This preliminary result was present at the recent ACRS (Australian Coral Reef Society) conference in Brisbane (28 Aug 2014). Ongoing genetics analyses for tropical vagrants, seadragons (inc citizen sample collection at Eden).”
Bramwell "My research seeks to describe trends in seagrass fish communities with distance from intertidal rocky reefs or platforms in Jervis Bay. To do this transects were lain in the seagrass with increasing distance away from the reef and several parameters measured along these. As well as collecting fish using a seine net and recording fish abundance and behaviour with Go-‐Pro cameras attached to stakes, zooplankton, benthic invertebrates, fish for stomach content analysis, and
seagrass shoots for morphological and epiphyte load comparisons were collected. Much of this past year was spent in the lab sorting and processing the material collected over the January-‐February 2014 sampling period. To complete the project an aquarium experiment will be run at the beginning of next year (2015) to observe fish's choice of habitat when offered several habitat combinations under different conditions of food availability and predator presence/absence."
Gwenael Cadiou “I am currently busy analysing data and writing up. At the end of June I have finished my field work with DPI retrieving the acoustic receivers from Newcastle to Moruya (receivers gating the main estuaries and coastal lagoons) and from the Georges, Shoalhaven and Clyde rivers. I presented some on my PhD work at the last AMSA conference in Canberra in July.”
Multi-‐scale movement patterns and field metabolic rates in luderick Girella tricuspidata using acoustic accelerometer. G. Cadiou, D.J. Booth, M.D. Taylor and N.L. Payne. 51st Annual conference, Australian Marine Sciences Association. 6-‐10 July 2014, Canberra.
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Photos
At Labor NSW Marine Parks announcement
Northside forum with Val Taylor
Northside forum GBR talk and panel discussion
Tagging shot for Guardian story, James Woodford
Nikki in battle regalia at Jervis Bay
Gwen Diving in the Clyde River