RLS Lap of Australia

Transcript for Reef Life Survey - Lap of Aus

Sydney has

quite incredible marine life for a large

City. You see an awful lot

we have a few shark species that are

quite common here port jacksons and

wobbegongs,

but my personal favorite are the

cephalopods, the

cuttlefish and the octopus.

I’ m John Turnbull, i'm the east coast

coordinator for reef life survey.

I learned to dive quite a long time ago

but then i stopped because i sort of

felt that there's not that much to see

where i live around home in Sydney.

You know it's a big city and i had the

view back then that you really had to

travel to other places

to see cool marine life.

In more recent years i started to get

back into diving and i realized no,

actually Sydney has quite

amazing marine life but i didn't really

know

what it was. I couldn't identify all the

fish species for example.

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I got involved in Reef Life Survey about

eight years ago.

I was doing research into the marine

environment and how

it is viewed by humans and the reef life

survey program was a great way for me to

get out in the water,

contribute to something positive, but

also learn myself about the species

and the ecosystem.

Here in sydney we

survey pretty much all year round

because we have a dedicated team of

volunteers and they just love getting

out in the water and they like doing

surveys.

So we have data coming in all year round

but it's a steady trickle.

Then once a year we try to really do

an intensive

session of a few weeks where we hit all

the sites as much as many sites as

possible and that means that every year we have

that big chunk of data that we can

compare year on year.

10 years ago they did a big circuit

around australia using

a whole variety of small boats they

could get their hands on and shore

diving

and they studied about 500 sites all the

way around australia.

Fast forward now 10 years later thanks

to funding by the

ian potter foundation we're now able to

repeat that

and do what we're calling the Lap of AUS

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Here in Sydney that's about 40 sites

that we're coming back to.

Normally in a year we would survey about

25 but this year we're doing

the additional ones that maybe haven't

been done for 10 years

and that allows scientists to look at

that decade of change. What has changed

over the last 10 years

not just in Sydney but all the way

around Australia.

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But the other thing that we're seeing is

we're starting to see the impacts of

climate change

in Sydney as well, particularly on

kelp forests. So the kelp forests are

getting smashed by storms, they're being

affected by pollution, but also the warm

water coming down

on the East Australian Current. That

combination of factors is weakening the

health of

the kelp forests, they are are starting to thin

out

and look a bit sick and that has

flow on effects. You know those forests are

food and shelter for many species.

On land if there was a forest over there

and the trees were dying or the animals

were disappearing

everyone would know in this local area

whereas out here

under the water it's a bit out of sight

and out of mind.

To me the big hope that i have is that

the combined efforts of

hundreds of volunteers will give us a

much better

view of what's really happening with the

marine environment. If you don't have

that data if you can't show a trend

it's very hard to then argue the case

with managers and government agencies

that we should be protecting things.

So to me the big thing I hope

is much more data coming from all those

efforts.

Leading to much better decisions to

conserve what we have.

In 50 years time i'd like to think that

what we're doing contributes to

better protection and better marine life

you.

Back to nature and rate of change

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