The coast has long been recognized as a complex and important landscape. At the interface between the aquatic and terrestrial environment, it is highly dynamic and connected, resulting in a diverse and productive area, but also under great pressure.
The coast is used by humans for transport, recreation, resource exploitation, and waste discharge. Recently global change effects and plastic pollution have also started gaining attention as emerging threats.
The interests of this group are related to issues that fall into all these themes. It includes work on algal aquaculture (1999) and ecophysiology (2009), through to coastal / nearshore ecology (2015) and environmental monitoring (2018).
With the development of the NMU Ocean Sciences campus and the support of the DST/SAEON Shallow Marine and Coastal Research Infrastructure, these research opportunities have just received an immense boost. It is an exciting and fast evolving area of work, that is both rewarding and vitally important.
This NMU botany department has been involved in long-term monitoring in the nearshore marine environment in Algoa Bay for more than ten years, and was responsible for this aspect of the baseline monitoring before the development of the Port of Ngqura.
The group has also been busy with supporting the development of abalone ranching in the Eastern Cape over the past five years. In particular the capturing of baseline information in the benthic communities and follow-up tracking of any potential impacts of ranching on these communities.
