Bright spots take out top science prize
A team of scientists led by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) won one of the nation’s top science awards at tonight’s ‘Oscars of Australian science’, the Eureka P
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
James Cook University Townsville
Queensland 4811 Australia
Phone: 61 7 4781 4000
Email: info@coralcoe.org.au
The immense and opaque Planet Ocean supports one of the largest and poorest known species pools on Earth. The decade long Census of Marine Life program banded together a global network of over 2600 scientists from 80+ nations around the world, who engaged in over 500 research cruises across jurisdictional and disciplinary boundaries to learn what lives in the ocean, what lived in the ocean, and what will live in the future ocean. Census scientists discovered over 1500 new species and counting, scattered from the intertidal to the deep ocean and spanning microbes to fishes, but more importantly advanced our understanding of distribution, diversity and abundance of global ocean life. This novel collaboration utilized technologies from DNA barcoding that provides definitive identifications of even cryptic species, to sonar techniques that rapidly image schools of fish the size of Manhattan, to electronic tags on animals that log oceanographic data from remote regions, tell us where animals move, and show us how they see the ocean. The amalgamation of over 28 million+ data records from thousands of year ago to recent efforts encompasses all ocean habitats and shows blind spots in our taxonomic and biogeographic knowledge. We now know much more about what lives in the oceans, where they live, and why they live there. Importantly, we are better positioned to place this knowledge in the context of what has been lost, what we stand to lose, and in identifying priorities for marine biodiversity research by linking ongoing national programs and emerging opportunities in a proposed initiative on Life in a Changing Ocean.
A team of scientists led by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) won one of the nation’s top science awards at tonight’s ‘Oscars of Australian science’, the Eureka P
An analytical tool will be used to assess the climate risks facing historic World Heritage sites in Africa—the ruins of two great 13th century ports and the remains of a palace and iron-making indus
A world-first study on the Great Barrier Reef shows crown-of-thorns starfish have the ability to find their own way home—a behaviour previously undocumented—but only if their neighbourhood is stoc
An international team of scientists has found leaving more big fish in the sea reduces the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) released into the Earth’s atmosphere. When a fish dies in the ocean it si
Abstract: Invasive species management can be the the subject of debate in many countries due to conflicting ecological, ethical, economic, and social reasons, especially when dealing with a species s
Abstract: Ocean acidification, the increase in seawater CO2 with all its associated consequences, is relatively well understood in open oceans. In shelf seas such as the Great Barrier Reef, processe
Abstract: The backdrop of legends and movies, the deep sea has always been unfathomable because we had no idea what existed there. Once thought to be barren of life, we now know this couldn’t be
Abstract: Coral reefs provide economic and environmental services for millions of people but undergoing significant ecological decline due to local (i.e., sedimentation, land-based pollution, invas
Abstract: Increasing human populations around the world’s coastline have caused extensive loss, degradation and fragmentation of coastal ecosystems. Swift losses of coastal ecosystems have been rec
Abstract: CHE is not a particular theory or a single approach but a collection of lines of research that address human-environmental interactions in coastal and marine systems at the local scale
Abstract: How can we care about something we never see or experience? Virtual reality has the potential to connect people with far-away places, and is an effective medium to generate empathy and sel
Partner Research Institutions
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
James Cook University Townsville
Queensland 4811 Australia
Phone: 61 7 4781 4000
Email: info@coralcoe.org.au