Secret Life of Kimberley Corals

GRAHAM LLOYD 

From:

The Australian 

March 24, 2012 12:00AM

THE remote Kimberley coast, widely considered to be the planet's last great tropical marine frontier, is slowly beginning to yield its secrets.

At the height of tropical cyclone Lua, which this week hammered the region with winds of up to 160km/h, marine scientist Ali McCarthy, 24, became the first person to witness the spawning of Kimberley onshore corals.

The event took place nine days after the full moon and after two wet, windy nights of monitoring aquariums at Cygnet Bay, about 200km north of Broome.

The captive spawning mirrored exactly what was happening on reefs a few hundred metres away, where the waters were awash with slicks of bright blue and pink secretions as corals released their gametes into the water for fertilisation.

The event, which can be accurately predicted, is remarkable for more than the way in which it will help explain the lifecycle of one of the world's least understood coral regions. The Kimberley coast is recognised as the most coral diverse area in Western Australia and may rival the Red Sea with 280 species of hard coral from 55 genera, many new to science. The research will help unlock the secrets of why Kimberley corals are thriving where contemporary marine science says they should not even exist.

"The environment in which the corals exist is almost beyond the normal parameters for coral survival, let alone growth," said Ms McCarthy.The onshore reefs of Cygnet Bay experience water temperatures of up to 40C without bleaching. They also withstand 12m tides, extreme turbidity and ocean acidification that would be devastating to other coral systems.

Water lily research flourishing in the Kimberley

Written by Geoff Vivian Wednesday, 18 January 2012 12:00

Science Network Western Australia

Dried Nymphaea violacea seeds are ground into flour for damper, the raw stems are eaten like celery and the tubers boiled and roasted as a vegetable. Image:eyeweed

A KINGS Park botanist is studying propagation viability of water lilies (Nymphaeacea), which occur in high-rainfall areas of Northern Australia.

Emma Dalziell who has made several collecting trips to the Kimberley, Darwin and Kakadu is collaborating with the Millennium Seed Bank Project (MSB) at Kew Gardens in England.

“Many of the storage techniques I’m using have arisen from King’s Parks longstanding research collaboration with the MSB,” she says.

“My PhD is specifically focusing on seed biology, long term storage behaviour of all Nymphaeacea occurring in Australia,” she says.

The seeds are subject to a variety of stimuli to assess their viability, and define suitable habitat types and appropriate storage and propagation conditions for possible reintroduction or restoration programs.

She says unlike Northern Hemisphere species, Australian lilies are adapted to long dry winters and the hot monsoonal conditions of Northern Australia’s “wet”.

They tolerate seed desiccation and can often grow, flower and produce seed in a relatively short time.

She says Australian lilies need a temperature range of 30–35 degrees Celcius to germinate.

“They are physiologically dormant,” she says. “They are waiting for various environmental cues.”

Ms Dalziell is also assessing the various species’ adaptability to climate change and related conditions such as increased salinity.

She gave the example of a two-centimetre rise in sea level, which could produce salt water inundations extending as far as five kilometres inland at Kakadu National Park.

Australian lilies have just been subjected to taxonomic review and there are now 18 recognised species across Northern Australia.

These range from Nymphaea violacea, which grows in a wide variety of habitats, to Nymphaea ondinea which is restricted to the extremely pure waters of sandstone creeks in only six known Kimberley locations.

Even rarer is Nymphaea kimberleyensis, which is known to occur in just one waterhole in a Central Kimberley cattle station.

Ms Dalziell says lilies are still an important food source for Aboriginal peoples across Northern Australia.

Dried Nymphaea violacea seeds are ground into flour for damper, the raw stems are eaten like celery and the tubers boiled and roasted as a vegetable.

Ms Dalziell says compared to other taxa, there has been very little research into Australian lilies’ biology and ecology.

50+ species of hard coral identified on one reef walk at Cygnet Bay