Genetic tracing fish offspring outside Kimberley no-take sanctuaries proposed

DNA tracking has been used to monitoring the effect of marine sanctuaries on stocks at nearby fisheries.

James Cook University marine biologist Prof Geoff Jones says the method could be easily used to study the impact of the new no-take zones at Camden Sound Marine Park off the Kimberley coast.

“The purpose of the study was to basically work out whether or not there were added benefits of having marine sanctuaries for restocking fish populations outside reserves,” he says.

“We’ve known for a long time that adult numbers build up in reserves, so there’s obviously some sort of conservation benefit within the reserve boundary.

“What people really wanted to know is ‘does that do any good for the fishery outside?’.”

He said there had never been a previously-agreed method for tracing the dispersal of baby fish from their parents.

“We put a lot of thought into that and we came up with a DNA technique.

“We now have the ability to find juvenile fish, sample the DNA of adults and then work out who belongs to whom.

“We did the proof of concept of this, years ago, using clown fishes.

“We not only did the DNA but we were able to tag eggs using a chemical marking technique - and we had almost 100% correspondence between the two different techniques.

Professor Jones and his colleagues applied the technique to coral trout breeding in three marine sanctuaries at Great Barrier Reef’s Keppel Islands.

“We were just amazed [at] how many small baby fish that we found that we could relate to parents back at the reserves,” he says.

“What astounded us really was that a lot of them were within one or two and up to 10 or 20 kilometres away from the reserve.

“I think it’s important to repeat the kind of work that we did on other species in other places just to see how this unfolds in terms of being a general concept.”

He says it would be well worth applying the method to a study of fish populations in and near the two no-take zones declared earlier this year at the new Camden Sound Marine Park, off the Kimberley coast.

“You can take a lot of conservation actions and you don’t really know if it’s beneficial for many years down the track—but for reserves you can see within two or three years something has happened.”

Kimberley coral spawning treats scientists to rare show

Thursday, 24 May 2012 10:00
Science Network Western Australia

CORAL spawning in the Kimberley coastline was recently first-witnessed by WA researchers, as slicks of blue and pink gametes lit the dark waters after sunset.


Dr Andrew Heyward from the Australian Marine Science Institute, who provided guidance to the KMRS leading up to the event, says observing the coral spawning is a first step in identifying the key seasonal patterns for corals along the Kimberley coast. Image:hjk_888

Recorded about 6.30pm on March 17 at the WAMSI partnered Kimberley Marine Research Station (KMRS) in Cygnet Bay, Research Officer Ali McCarthy says “the combination of natural phenomena with the wild wet season weather overhead and this remarkable spawning snowstorm under the surface was genuinely awe-inspiring.”

“We saw the first signs of spawning activity as turquoise gametes were released from the Faviid and Mussid corals and shortly afterwards, the Acroporid corals began releasing their gametes into the water and the aquariums were awash with slicks of blue and pink spawn.”

“From a scientific perspective, it was really exciting in that this was something new, not just for me or for us at KMRS, but for the greater Kimberley coastline as a whole, where it had been acknowledged that in general the finer details of spawning activity along the mainland Kimberley coast were not well studied and had not yet been observed directly for science.”

Dr Andrew Heyward from the Australian Marine Science Institute, who provided guidance to the KMRS leading up to the event, says observing the coral spawning is a first step in identifying the key seasonal patterns for corals along the Kimberley coast.

“If it turns out most corals spawn along the Kimberley at certain times of year then we can look at the currents and get a much better idea of which way the spawn will travel and hence, how connected different parts of the coast are.

“At a broader level, these initial observations at Cygnet Bay show that for some coral species at least, their reproductive patterns and timing are the same as offshore reefs in the region such as Scott Reef and the Rowley Shoals.

“As we extend these studies, it may be that the biology of corals in the region is shown to be quite similar to what we know from better studied reef areas.”

Although spawning demonstrates a time of renewal for our reef building corals, Ms McCarthy says the Kimberley corals as a whole are not well understood due to their remoteness.

“It is only in recent years that their uniqueness and high biodiversity have been explored and recognised in a western science perspective,” she says.

The observations are just a building block from which to launch further investigations and establish monitoring programs.

It is hoped the KMRS can begin to collate a series of data over time and start to fill the knowledge gaps that surround the Kimberley marine environment.

Kimberley corals defy conventional scientific understanding in Talbot Bay

Talbot Bay coral discovery defies conventional belief

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Written by Geoff Vivian Tuesday, 08 November 2011 09:00

The clarity of the water is affected by this large inter-tidal flow thus the discovery of corals in this environment is a surprise. Flickr: Waltzing Van

KIMBERLEY coral reefs are thriving in turbid inter-tidal conditions and defying conventional scientific understandings that corals need clear oceanic waters to survive.

Marine biologist Dr Barry Wilson last year spent time at Turtle Reef in Talbot Bay, on advice from One Arm Point’s Bardi-Jawi people.

Dr Wilson says there is greater diversity of coral species in Kimberley reefs than in oceanic atolls or the Great Barrier Reef.

“There have been 318 species of corals recorded now on the Kimberley coast,” he says.

Researchers in the late 1940s said the Kimberley had “a profusion of ordinary fringing reefs”.

Dr Wilson says they were right about the profusion of Kimberley reefs, but not about them being ordinary.

Known to survive at a depth of 60 metres in clear oceanic waters, Dr Wilson has found Talbot Bay corals as deep as 20 metres in turbid, muddy conditions.

Dr Wilson says non-Indigenous scientists would not normally look for corals in locations such as Turtle Reef.

“The water is very far from clear and oceanic—it’s turbid and the light doesn’t penetrate far. It’s not the sort of environment [conventional] corals require, yet we’ve got this prolific growth of corals,” he says

“This is in a land-locked gulf, you’ve really got to navigate your way in and you will have [difficulty] getting out if you don’t know your way.

“[The environment] is macro-tidal, [it has] eleven metres of tidal flow twice a day.

“As a consequence … the current flows away and you get whirlpools in the ocean,” he says.

The clarity of the water is affected by this large inter-tidal flow thus the discovery of corals in this environment is a surprise.

About 70 per cent of the Talbot Bay corals appear to be common to Queensland’s Barrier Reef.

Dr Wilson suspects the remaining 30 per cent will be found in Indonesia’s Maluku province, because of its proximity to Australia. He says the discovery turns conventional thought about coral on its head.

“This is the sort of information which some people will find difficult to believe because they have all been taught that corals all need clear oceanic water and it’s not true,” he says.

The original article 'Reconnaissance of species-rich coral reefs in a muddy, macro-tidal, enclosed embayment, – Talbot Bay, Kimberley, Western Australia' has been published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia issue 94.

http://www.sciencewa.net.au/3712-talbot-bay-coral-discovery-defies-conventional-belief.html