jaybee
25-05-2004, 06:13 PM
Courier Mail News
Brendan O'Malley
24may04
WHETHER you are able to catch a coral trout off the far north Queensland coast comes down to the health of just 15 to 20 coral reefs.
Surprising new research at James Cook University shows the reefs are critical to fish stocks on hundreds of other reefs in the Cairns region of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
The finding should help the park's managers protect those areas so there would always be a good supply of tropical fish such as red emperor and trout.
JCU computer models programmed with 30 years of data on winds, tides and currents show big coral outcrops like Arlington, Tongue, Batt and Lark reefs "seed" other areas with immature fish.
Some of the other 300 reefs included in the model also were important but fell short of the waves of fish larvae released by the 20 big "source reefs".
"These reefs are not only seeding other reefs, they also seed themselves," JCU mathematician Lance Bode said.
"This is an important tool in recognising specific reefs that demand special treatment and consideration by management and user – reefs that could be integral to the long-term maintenance of reef sustainability."
Scientists have previously tried to work out where coral larvae came from in order to protect reefs that were an important source for young, replacement corals.
But the complex lifecycle of coral polyps, which float on the surface before slowly sinking to the bottom, made it extremely difficult to model their movements.
Dr Bode said fish larvae were easier to model on computers because they usually hung around in the middle of the water column where the water direction was more predictable.
"We simulated 32 years in our model because if we took data from just one or two years there could have been some special meteorological conditions which would have affected the results," he said.
Despite the problems other researchers had experienced in working out the movements of coral polyps, he hoped to extend the work to corals, crown of thorns starfish and nutrient flows.
But Dr Bode, who worked with the Reef Co-operative Research Centre, was worried his studies would not be completed if the Federal Government did not find replacement funds for the Reef CRC, which recently missed out on a renewal of its federal grant.
Brendan O'Malley
24may04
WHETHER you are able to catch a coral trout off the far north Queensland coast comes down to the health of just 15 to 20 coral reefs.
Surprising new research at James Cook University shows the reefs are critical to fish stocks on hundreds of other reefs in the Cairns region of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
The finding should help the park's managers protect those areas so there would always be a good supply of tropical fish such as red emperor and trout.
JCU computer models programmed with 30 years of data on winds, tides and currents show big coral outcrops like Arlington, Tongue, Batt and Lark reefs "seed" other areas with immature fish.
Some of the other 300 reefs included in the model also were important but fell short of the waves of fish larvae released by the 20 big "source reefs".
"These reefs are not only seeding other reefs, they also seed themselves," JCU mathematician Lance Bode said.
"This is an important tool in recognising specific reefs that demand special treatment and consideration by management and user – reefs that could be integral to the long-term maintenance of reef sustainability."
Scientists have previously tried to work out where coral larvae came from in order to protect reefs that were an important source for young, replacement corals.
But the complex lifecycle of coral polyps, which float on the surface before slowly sinking to the bottom, made it extremely difficult to model their movements.
Dr Bode said fish larvae were easier to model on computers because they usually hung around in the middle of the water column where the water direction was more predictable.
"We simulated 32 years in our model because if we took data from just one or two years there could have been some special meteorological conditions which would have affected the results," he said.
Despite the problems other researchers had experienced in working out the movements of coral polyps, he hoped to extend the work to corals, crown of thorns starfish and nutrient flows.
But Dr Bode, who worked with the Reef Co-operative Research Centre, was worried his studies would not be completed if the Federal Government did not find replacement funds for the Reef CRC, which recently missed out on a renewal of its federal grant.