The Nature Coast Marine Group, a community organisation based in the Eurobodalla, has been awarded a funding grant to carry out surveys of marine life on reefs in and around the Batemans Marine Park. The Southern Rivers Catchment Management Authority has awarded the grant, with funding from the Australian Government’s Caring for our Country Program. The grant will enable divers from the NCMG to survey at least 16 sites from Mollymook to Bermagui twice over the next 12 months.
NCMG President Jenny Edwards described the grant as an important development for the group, as it builds on an existing survey program carried out by NCMG snorkelers and will enable the group to develop capacity to carry out more complex research into the future. “We are pleased that the Southern Rivers CMA has shown confidence in our group’s work. We also welcome the scientific supervision of the project by the Batemans Marine Park and the Reef Life Survey program of the Tasmanian Aquaculture and Fisheries Institute.”
Project managers Andrew Green and Bill Barker said the project is already well under way. Two training programs have been held to train eight divers in the survey methodology and the first round of surveys is approaching completion. The project includes an education and information component aimed at raising community awareness of the marine environment.
The survey techniques are standardized to ensure comparability between different sites and different times. Two surveys are done at each site, with divers laying out a 50 metre measuring tape under water and then identifying and counting all fish seen within 5 metres of the line and all large mobile invertebrates within 1 metre of the line. Surveyors also take a set of underwater photographs of the bottom, so that differences can be noted from site to site and time to time. The data collected will become part of the Australia-wide Reef Life Survey database and will be available to the Marine Park and other scientific users.
Project manager Bill Barker said that gathering data on the marine environment has always presented challenges arising from weather and underwater conditions, lack of trained personnel and cost. “It is only relatively recently, with the recognition of threats to the marine environment and the declaration of many marine parks around Australia’s coastline, that a larger scale effort has begun aimed at building up a better picture of the local marine environment and its inhabitants. This grant will make a contribution to other work to ensure that data on the marine life of our coastline will be part of this wider effort.”
Anyone interested in knowing more should contact Bill Barker or Andrew Green on info@ncmg.org.au.