- Research into the future of Australia’s “other reef” – the Great Southern Reef – shows that even under the most optimistic carbon emission scenarios, ocean warming is likely to cause substantial loss of critical habitat-forming seaweeds by 2100.
- The research,, was published in Diversity and Distributions. The Great Southern Reef is a massive series of reefs with extensive kelp seaweed forests that extend around Australia’s southern coastline, covering around 71,000sqkm from Brisbane to Kalbarri.
- We looked at the present and future distribution of 15 large dominant seaweed species and found they would lose between 30-100 per cent of their current area to ocean warming even under the optimistic most scenario where we aim to limit global warming to less than 2C,”
- “This is bad news because these seaweeds support our globally unique marine biodiversity and fisheries such as abalone and rock lobster, Australia’s most valuable fisheries.”
- Currently dominant species such as common kelp and strapweed were predicted to lose nearly half of their present distribution to become compressed in pockets on the south coast.
- Other seaweeds such as giant kelp, bull kelp and crayweed were predicted to become extinct from the Australian continent.
- the socio-economic as well as ecological consequences of these reductions of habitat-forming seaweeds could be devastating.
- “These seaweeds are the trees of the oceans and the foundation of kelp forests that support ecosystem services such as biodiversity and fisheries resources worth more than $10 billion per year in Australia,”
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