The Marine Biologist Issue 12

The 

Issue 12 

April 2019 

Marine 

ISSN 2052-5273 

Biologist 

The magazine of the 

marine biological community 

The hidden wonders 

of our oceans 

Testing the potential of environmental DNA 

Alien invader chokes on parasite 

Should we harvest kelp? 

Radical regime shift in NE Pacific coastal ecosystems | Recreating 

extraterrestrial oceans | Fixed-wing drones | South Atlantic MPA

The Marine Biological Association 

The Laboratory, Citadel Hill, 

Plymouth, PL1 2PB, UK 

Editor Guy Baker 

editor@mba.ac.uk 

+44 (0)1752 426239 

Executive editor Matt Frost 

matfr@mba.ac.uk 

+44 (0)1752 426343 

Editorial Board Guy Baker, Kelvin Boot, 

Matt Frost, Gerald Boalch and Paul Rose. 

Membership Alex Street 

alexa@mba.ac.uk 

+44 (0)1752 426347 

www.mba.ac.uk/membership 

ISSN: 2052-5273 

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Editorial 

From drones to the DNA in a 

shrimp's gut, our capacity to observe 

the ocean seems to be limited only by 

our imagination. All this accumulating 

data is potential evidence in support of 

sustainable management of the marine 

environment. But is evidence enough? 

Weak governance and corruption enable 

illegal fishing, such as that perpetrated 

by Chinese, Russian, and European 

vessels in West Africa, and trade such as 

the global trade in shark fins. 

In this edition we present reports 

and updates from the front line of 

ocean observation. From the shallow 

seas to the deepest ocean, we hear how 

scientists are examining ecosystems 

using traditional ecological methods 

and by working with the communities 

that depend on them, but also through 

the use of remotely operated vehicles, 

drones and environmental DNA. 

In our cover story Professor Alex 

Rogers shares his love for the features 

and creatures of the deep sea, and 

highlights a major initiative that aims 

to fill the knowledge gaps that hinder 

protection of these remote but vital 

ecosystems. An unlikely but defendable 

segue takes us to deepest Didcot in 

southern England where the ocean of 

one of Saturn's moons is being 

simulated to probe its potential to 

harbour life. 

Research into highly productive 

coastal ecosystems that are not coral 

reefs is under-resourced. Kelps are large, 

brown, canopy-forming seaweeds that 

are distributed across around a quarter 

of the world’s coastlines. Seagrass 

meadows are accessible sources of food 

for millions of people, especially in the 

tropics. Both underpin critical ecological 

processes and provide habitat for 

commercially important species. 

Large-scale losses of kelp forests and 

seagrass beds are taking place and I 

hope the articles in this edition help 

spread appreciation of the vital services 

these ecosystems provide, beyond those 

who study them or depend on them for 

a livelihood. 

In a recent paper in Marine Policy 

Richard Stafford questions the current 

focus on ocean plastics while more 

critical threats to the ocean exist. 

Plastic is visible and connected to our 

daily lives (see the article on microfibres 

on page 26). With so many 

competing issues vying for our 

attention, the current media interest in 

ocean plastics is raising awareness of 

human impacts on the ocean. This may 

lead us to reflect more widely on how 

our behaviours and choices impact the 

natural environment. However, plastics 

are not the primary threat to the ocean, 

and, as Stafford argues, such singleissue 

focus distracts us from the 

profound and systemic changes needed 

to stay within 1.5° C of warming as 

urged by the IPCC report. The 

challenge for our community is to 

weave a coherent narrative about ocean 

issues that puts 

the topic of the 

day in context. 

We welcome your articles, letters and reviews, and we can 

advertise events. Please contact us for details or see the 

magazine website at www.mba.ac.uk/marine-biologist 

www.mba.ac.uk 

@thembauk 

Front cover: Urchins, Dermechinus horridus on coral, Atlantis Bank Seamount, 

Southwest Indian Ridge. 

Back cover: Litter in the deep sea: a fisherman’s glove lost on Sapmer Bank Seamount, 

Southwest Indian Ridge. Both images © IUCN/NERC Seamounts Project. 

02 The Marine Biologist | April 2019

Contents 

Issue 12 

April 2019 

02 Editorial 

04 In brief 

08 

Research digests 

06 Discovering and mapping marine biodiversity using 

environmental DNA Martin Genner & Stefano Mariani 

08 Novel applications for an amphibious fixed-wing drone 

Melissa Schiele 

10 Alien invader chokes on parasite Periklis Kletou & Jason Hall-Spencer 

Policy 

12 

11 Would a global network of marine stations give us 

a stronger voice? Matt Frost 

Features 

12 The hidden wonders of our oceans Alex Rogers 

16 A note on cold-water coral taxonomy Eve Southward 

17 Recreating extraterrestrial oceans Lorna Campbell 

18 Altered states: a change in the coastal ecosystems 

of the North-east Pacific Cynthia Catton & Guy Baker 

22 

20 A sustainable harvest? Dan Smale 

22 The South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands 

Marine Protected Area Guy Baker 

24 Planting trees to conserve seagrass Richard Unsworth & 

Leanne Cullen-Unsworth 

Sharing marine science 

26 Coming out in the wash Chloe Juyon 

24 

27 Bioprospecting for algal riches Valeria Villanova 

28 Easy access to the sea at a unique waterfront campus 

Cathy Lucas 

30 The International Temperate Reefs Symposium Jenna Ho-Marris 

31 Making a splash at the 2018 Young Marine Biologist's 

Summit Eliane Bastos 

32 And the winners are... MBA student bursary awardee reports 

34 Reviews 

08: Retrieving an unmanned aerial 

vehicle in Belize. © ZSL. 

12: Orange roughy. © NERC/IUCN 

Seamounts Project. 

22: King penguin, South Georgia. 

© Argos Froyanes. 

24: Seagrass meadow. © R.K.F. 

Unsworth. 

April 2019 | The Marine Biologist 03

In brief 

The mushroom coral Fungia scutaria. Image: NOAA. 

Freezing coral larvae could save 

coral reefs 

For the first time, scientists have frozen 

and safely thawed coral larvae—raising the 

possibility that some threatened coral 

species could be saved from extinction. A 

paper published in Scientific Reports, 

presents the results of successful cryopreservation 

of Fungia scutaria larvae 

(mushroom coral). 

The authors found that successful 

cryopreservation could be achieved using a 

method called vitrification to freeze coral 

larvae in the first days of their life cycle. The 

larvae were dunked into liquid nitrogen after 

being treated with a type of cryoprotectant. 

In this way it was possible to freeze relatively 

undeveloped larvae, without the formation 

of ice crystals that can damage cells. 

Surrounding the embryos with gold 

nanorods, which convert a laser’s light into 

heat, helped to uniformly warm the larvae 

with an infrared laser. Thawed this way, 43 

percent of the two-day-old larvae survived 

and started swimming again. Larvae that 

underwent the new warming process went 

on to develop and swim for at least 12 

hours after thawing. 

‘Innovative technology like this is going to 

be crucial to saving the biodiversity of corals 

worldwide.’ said Jonathan Daly, lead author 

on the paper. Scientists are now working on 

accelerating the process so that a large 

amount of larvae can be cryopreserved and 

thawed within a short period of time. Scaling 

up the cryopreservation and laser warming 

process would be an important step for reef 

restoration. 

Melissa Ratsch 

Ascension Island MPA 

In March, the UK Government backed 

plans by Ascension Island for a fully 

protected ‘no-take’ marine protected area 

around Ascension Island, a UK Overseas 

Territory in the tropical Atlantic Ocean. 

The new MPA will be 443,000 km 2 in size 

and will close the off-shore area of the 

Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) to any 

fishing activity. Previously, commercial 

fishing—mostly longlining for tuna—was 

permitted in half of Ascension Island's 

waters. 

The announcement has been widely 

welcomed as the surrounding waters are a 

bastion for green turtles and top predators 

including large tuna, swordfish and sharks. 

Environment Secretary Michael Gove 

said, ‘This progress towards fully protecting 

all of Ascension Island’s waters is an 

important step forward in expanding our 

Blue Belt and protecting a third of the 

world’s ocean by 2030. I hope countries 

around the world will follow suit.’ 

When protected, the new no-take zone 

Diversity and abundance in the sea off 

Ascension Island. Image © SMSG. 

around Ascension Island would bring the 

total percentage of MPAs in the UK’s 

territorial waters, Overseas Territories and 

Crown Dependencies to over 50 per cent. 

Nevertheless, the Government faced 

pointed questions from the Environmental 

Audit Committee's enquiry into Sustainable 

Seas about delivery of its Blue Belt 

programme, particularly over funding after 

2020, and inadequate management plans 

for some MPAs. 

The human cost of marine plastic 

A study in the journal Marine Pollution 

Bulletin reports that plastic in the sea costs 

human society billions of dollars every year 

with adverse impacts on the economy and 

human wellbeing. 

Marine plastic pollution negatively affects 

marine ecosystem services, especially in 

regard to the provision of sustainable 

fisheries and aquaculture, heritage values, 

and recreation and tourism. The economic 

cost of marine plastic was estimated 

between $3,300 and $33,000 per tonne of 

marine plastic per year. 

Nicola Beaumont, lead author and 

Environmental Economist at Plymouth 

Marine Laboratory said: ‘Our calculations 

are a first stab at “putting a price on plastic”, 

we know we have to do more research to 

refine them, but we are convinced that 

already they are an underestimate of the real 

costs to global human society. Knowing this 

price can help us make informed decisions.’ 


Sprat spat: sustainability strategy 

for small pelagic fish rejected for 

the Adriatic Sea 

A debate on the way anchovy and 

sardine stocks in the Adriatic are managed 

turned heated at a meeting of the European 

Parliament (EP) in Strasbourg in November, 

after an amendment to introduce a 

quota-type system was rejected in favour of 

maintaining the existing regime. 

The EU Commission put forward an 

amendment to introduce the biomass 

escapement strategy (BES), which allows 

for greater landings when stocks are high 

and reductions when it is low. However, the 

EP voted to adopt a report by Croatian 

rapporteur Ruža Tomašić which favoured 

retaining the current levels of fishing but with 

a 4 per cent decrease year on year from 

2020 to 2022. 

The BES aims for a ‘deterministic 

biomass limit’, being the minimum biomass 

that should remain in the sea every year 

after fishing that is capable of producing 

MSY (maximum sustainable yield) with 95 

per cent confidence. EU fisheries boss 

Karmenu Vella said that those opposing it 


In brief 

were ignoring scientific advice, and out of 

line with CFP (Common Fisheries Policy) 

principles. 

The European Conservatives and 

Reformists Group (ECR), of which Tomašić 

is a member, applauded the rejection of 

‘drastic quotas’ which it said would have 

devastating effects on the industry. 

WWF predicts that anchovy and sardine 

stocks in the Adriatic are about to collapse. 

Rare sighting of sperm whales in 

the Canadian Arctic 

For some species, a warming ocean 

means more available habitat. Last 

September, Brandon Laforest of the WWF 

and his guide Titus Allooloo spotted a pair 

of sperm whales in Canadian waters near 

Pond Inlet, Nunavut. This was only the 

second recorded observation of this species 

in the region. 

Sperm whales prefer ice-free waters: with 

a fleshy dorsal fin and head, their bodies are 

not adapted to breaking through ice. Marine 

biologists fear that the whales could get 

trapped in the region as temperatures 

plummet. ‘Inexperienced whales exploiting a 

northern habitat may not know to leave early 

enough before the sea ice forms’ Laforest 

told the Canadian news channel CBC. 

Laforest added that the whales he saw 

have likely returned south, but their stopover 

in Pond Inlet suggests the region is 

becoming ‘more open for them to exploit in 

terms of accessing food.’ The effects of 

climate change in colder regions can 

potentially expand the sperm whale’s habitat 

and feeding range. 

Changing conditions, less sea ice and 

warmer ocean temperatures may mean 

more frequent sightings of unusual species 

in polar waters. 


Seaweed in cattle feed reduces 

methane emissions 

Early results from an ongoing study 

suggest that adding seaweed to cows’ diets 

could be a strategy for reducing global 

greenhouse gas emissions. 

Professor Ermias Kebreab at the 

Department of Animal Science, University of 

California, Davis, says certain varieties of 

seaweed, like the red macroalgae Asparagopsis 

taxiformis, contain a compound that 

inhibits methane production and could 

drastically cut methane emissions from 

livestock. 

Even a small amount of seaweed added 

to cattle food can reduce methane 

emissions from cattle gut microbes by as 

much as 99 per cent. Digestion in ruminants 

such as cattle relies on millions of gut 

microbes processing and fermenting 

high-fibre foods. This process allows the 

animals to live on a diet of grass and hay, 

but it also produces large amounts of 

methane. The FAO states that total 

emissions from global livestock are 7.1 

Gigatonnes of CO 2 

-equivalent per year, 

Image: Christopher Michel [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)] 

representing a massive 14 per cent of all 

anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. 

In a world first, 12 live dairy cows are being 

fed a diet of regular feed mixed with a 

seaweed-molasses mixture, and the 

amount of methane in their breath is 

measured as they eat. No differences in 

milk production have been detected so far. 

Further tests with additional cattle are 

ongoing, to determine if seaweed 

supplements could provide a viable, 

long-term means of reducing greenhouse 

gas emissions. 


British Phycological Society 

The British Phycological Society will be 

holding its 68th annual conference on the 

6-9 January 2020 in Plymouth. Grégory 

Beaugrand of the Centre National de la 

Recherche Scientifique, Université de Lille, 

France, and the MBA, will be one of the 

plenary speakers and the conference will 

have pure and applied parallel sessions. The 

conference will be hosted by the University 

of Plymouth, the Marine Biological 

Association and Plymouth Marine 

Laboratory. 

Jason Hall-Spencer 

Warming-related hypoxia was 

behind the end-Permian mass 

extinction 

The end of the Permian Period (c. 252 

million years ago) was marked by the largest 

extinction in Earth’s history. This mass 

extinction, also known as the ‘great dying’ 

wiped out up to 70 per cent of terrestrial 

species and 96 per cent of all marine 

species. 

In a paper recently published in Science, 

researchers set out to discover whether 

ocean warming and accompanying loss of 

oxygen could account for the marine mass 

extinction. With the help of models of ocean 

conditions and animal metabolism, and 

fossil records, the study showed that the 

severity and biogeography of the marine 

mass extinction could be explained by 

warming that left marine organisms unable 

to breathe. 

After a series of severe volcanic 

eruptions in Siberia, massive amounts of 

greenhouse gases were released into the 

atmosphere, bringing about an estimated 

10°C increase in sea surface temperature. 

The metabolism of marine animals sped 

up, raising the oxygen demand that 

warmer, less oxygenated waters could not 

supply. Animals at high latitudes were 

particularly hard-hit, as suitable conditions 

disappeared world-wide. The ocean lost 

about 80 per cent of its oxygen, and about 

half of the ocean seafloor became 

completely anoxic, especially at lower 

depths. 

The findings of this study can help us 

understand the impacts of climate change 

in the current age. While current climate 

conditions are not as severe as they were 

during the late Permian Period, humaninduced 

global warming has already led to 

lower oxygen levels in parts of the ocean in 

recent decades. 




Discovering and mapping marine 

biodiversity using environmental DNA 

Martin Genner and Stefano Mariani report on work that tests the potential of environmental DNA. 

We are entering a new phase of 

discovery of marine 

biodiversity. Until relatively 

recently, our knowledge of the 

distribution of species has relied most 

heavily on our own observational 

records or databases of museum 

collections. But now, marine scientists 

are increasingly using large-scale 

sequencing of DNA within the 

environment to gain an understanding 

of where species live and their roles in 

the functioning of marine ecosystems. 

Marine biologists studying microbial 

organisms have long understood 

that it is possible to take a sample 

from the water (Fig. 1) or a plankton 

net and use the DNA inside to 

identify the species present. So, the 

fundamental concept of sequencing 

‘invisible’ diversity is not that new. 

What is new is our ability to sequence 

samples on unprecedented scales. We 

now routinely generate millions of 

DNA sequences from a single sample 

of water or plankton using high 

throughput sequencing technology. 

The remarkable power of DNAbased 

analyses of our oceans was first 

revealed by analyses of pelagic samples, 

which have uncovered the presence 

of over 40 million genes, of which 

for species detection eDNA 

may outperform standard 

sampling approaches 

over 80% were new to science. These 

genes belong to an estimated 35,000 

prokaryotic species, most of which 

are undescribed bacteria. In addition, 

over 150,000 potential microplankton 

species have been recovered from 

pelagic samples, of which over a 

quarter cannot be assigned to any 

known eukaryotic group. It is thought 

that wider and deeper sampling 

will in future reveal the presence 

of millions of marine species—far 

more than the 243,000 species that 

are currently formally described 

from the marine environment. 

But it is not just DNA from 

microbial species that is present in 

the marine environment. DNA from 

larger ‘macrobiota’ such as jellyfish, 

sharks and turtles is released following 

normal biological processes such as the 

excretion of urine, faeces, blood, eggs, 

sperm or mucus. Such ‘environmental 

DNA’ can be captured and sequenced 

to inform us of which large-bodied 

species were present recently. The 

beauty of this approach is that it 

requires us to collect a sample of water 

or sediment only, without any substantive 

impact on the environment. 

Due to water movement, can 

environmental DNA be used as 

Figure 1. A water-sampling rosette used for taking samples for eDNA analysis. Image © Cusa/Brodie. 



a reliable marker of the presence 

of large-bodied species? In part, 

the answer depends on the extent 

and direction of flow, but it will 

also depend on the rate at which 

environmental DNA decays due to 

microbial activity. Our experiments 

suggest that eDNA from fish in UK 

seawater decays at an exponential 

rate, and reaches lower limits of 

detectability after two to three days. 

This suggests that environmental DNA 

may well be a useful marker of species' 

presence, particularly in locations 

where water movement is restricted, 

or at least can be accounted for. 

A limitation of the use of environmental 

DNA is that the number of 

individual sequences (or ‘reads’) from 

a DNA sequencer may not reflect 

the abundance of species, mainly 

because the rates of environmental 

DNA production will vary among 

species, or even within species over 

time. For example, species may vary 

in the amount and timing of the 

production of eggs and sperm. Even 

so, it has been found that, at the 

community-level, sequencer read count 

can reflect abundance in some cases; 

but it appears that caution is required 

before assuming read counts are always 

reflective of the number of individuals. 

Environmental DNA is becoming 

steadily adopted as a useful tool 

for ecologists to study the marine 

environment. Samples can be collected 

rapidly, and as laboratory protocols 

and data-handling 

methods become 

standard practices, 

the methods are 

becoming easier to 

use. Increasing work 

is showing that for species detection, at 

least, the method may even outperform 

standard sampling approaches, such 

as underwater baited video for shark 

censuses. There are even indications 

that sampling eDNA in the water 

may be sufficient to infer the spatial 

relationships of populations within 

species. Nevertheless, there is considerable 

work to do to build the databases 

sampling eDNA may be 

sufficient to infer the spatial 

relationships of populations 

within species 

Box 1. Using shrimps to count fish 

There are few environments where human pressures are more focussed 

than estuaries. Fish populations are excellent indicators of estuary ecosystem 

health, but sampling is labour-intensive, expensive and selective. 

A recent application of eDNA metabarcoding uses the 'natural sampling' 

properties of shrimps. Combined with eDNA, metabarcoding of the stomach 

contents of these ubiquitous estuarine scavengers revealed the presence of 

twice as many species of fish as traditional sampling. 

The shrimp Crangon crangon, whose stomach contents are helping to 

measure estuary health. Image © MBA/John Rundle. 

of reference genes (and genomes) that 

allow us to confirm the presence of a 

species, particularly given that so many 

marine species remain undescribed. 

An important consideration is that 

methods relying on environmental 

DNA can never replace traditional 

invasive sampling methods where 

detailed biological information 

is required 

from captured 

specimens. For 

example, for effective 

management 

of fished stocks, 

information on the age, sex, size 

and health of individuals may be 

critical. Even so, environmental 

DNA methods could in future be 

used to inform more targeted deployment 

of invasive survey methods. 

The marine environment is undergoing 

unprecedented changes due to the 

effects of pollution, coastal development, 

overharvesting, climate change 

and species invasions. To fully understand 

the extent of change over large 

spatial and temporal scales requires the 

application of least-biased methods to 

rapidly survey biodiversity. DNA, as 

the ubiquitous building block of life, 

and in its increased ease of detection, 

is finely poised to deliver just that. It is 

possible to imagine surveys of marine 

biodiversity across ocean basins using 

eDNA from seawater and sediment, 

sequenced in central facilities, and 

cryogenically stored for future evaluations 

of our current diversity. Such 

surveys could form a global baseline 

that allows assessment and understanding 

of future change to inform management 

and conservation of increasingly 

threatened marine habitats. 

Martin Genner (M.Genner@bristol. 

ac.uk), Professor in Evolutionary 

Ecology, University of Bristol, and 

Stefano Mariani (S.Mariani@salford. 

ac.uk), Professor of Conservation 

Genetics / Assoc. Dean Research at 

the University of Salford. 



Novel applications for an 

amphibious fixed-wing drone 

Economical, faster and further-ranging than quadcopters, fixed-wing water-landing unmanned aerial vehicles 

(UAVs) have huge potential for conservation and fisheries enforcement. Melissa Schiele tests this new technology. 

On the bow of an industrial-looking 65 m patrol vessel, in 

the middle of the Indian Ocean, two scientists tentatively 

assemble the first water-landing amphibious fixed-wing 

UAV. Flight conditions are perfect: the wind is below 15 

knots, the equatorial sun is shining. One scientist is behind 

the computer holding the RC controller, whilst the other lifts 

the prototype UAV. A quick countdown before a successful 

launch. With all binoculars excitedly focussed on her, the 

UAV flies effortlessly around an island. She then lands on the 

gentle ocean waves like a swan. Everyone gives a sigh of relief 

with huge smiles—they have successfully landed their first 

fixed-wing amphibious drone on water in the Indian Ocean. 

In late 2017, Dr Tom Letessier, a marine biologist at the 

Zoological Society of London, had the idea to explore the 

use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in marine ecology 

and for illegal fishery surveillance. He wanted a drone which 

would be resilient and far-ranging, good at gathering useable 

images for diverse types of analysis, 

cost effective and easy to use. 

He also wanted it to be 100% 

waterproof for a life out at sea, 

and here lay the challenge: to his 

knowledge, this hadn’t been done 

for applications in ecology and 

maritime surveillance of fishing 

vessels. The first trials of the prototype, 

developed by engineers in 

Canada, were carried out in the 

summer of 2018 in the British 

Indian Ocean Territories (BIOT) 

marine protected area (MPA), by 

Letessier and me—at the time I 

was an MSc student at Imperial 

Figure 1. The Turneffe Atoll Sustainability Association 

(TASA) team meeting the drone for the first time. Image © 

Zoological Society of London 

Figure 2. Testing the amphibious, fixed-wing drone at a various 

altitudes lets us understand what is detectable, be it marine 

megafauna or habitat like this Caribbean reef. Image © Zoological 

Society of London 

College London. The trials, funded by the Marine Management 

Organisation and the Bertarelli Foundation, had two 

distinct objectives: gathering imagery to see if detection of 

patterns in megafauna distribution was possible; and to see 

if the drone could be used in illegal fishery surveillance, to 

streamline the BIOT patrol vessels operations as part of the 

UK Government's Blue Belt Programme 1 . Usually, abundance 

and species information is gleaned from catch data, 

but commercial fishing is prohibited in the marine protected 

area. In the case of this and similar MPAs, innovative new 

techniques are needed to assess the effectiveness of the protected 

zone on animal numbers, and drones are potentially a 

viable method to do this. Despite a shaky start we have had 

several successes, including identifying animals to species 

level and a thorough technical report, which I authored. The 

latest versions of the UAVs were sent to Belize in mid- 

February 2019 for more trials, which are currently ongoing. 

In Belize the UAVs are being 

trialled to test their suitability as part 

of the Turneffe Atoll Sustainability 

Association’s (Fig. 1) enforcement 

operations in the Turneffe Atoll 

MPA. The conservation officers, 

stationed within the atoll, carry out 

regular patrols for fishers breaking 

the protected area's rules and have 

expressed great excitement for the 

drones. They told us, ‘We have used 

quadcopters in the past, but these 

new drones can cover such a large 

distance—they are great for surveillance. 

They are also easy to use.’ In 

1 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-blue-belt-programme 



Figure 3. a) Two eagle rays feeding in Cockroach 

Caye. b) A manatee (arrowed) spotted in Long 

Bough Lagoon. c) The small island of 'Bikini Bottom' 

from 85 m altitude. d) The drone's camera was 

angled at 10 degrees, in order to help in terrestrial 

habitat mapping. The image shows mangroves. All 

images from the Turneffe Atoll MPA, Belize. 

Images © Zoological Society of London. 

a 

my current role I have been training the 

officers to use the drone and I am keen to 

create a full operational plan for the reserve. 

We have already used the drone’s improved 

nadir (downward-facing) 20 mp camera, 

which takes five photos per second, to collect 

usable intelligence pertaining to land-use 

change, and we have managed to fly beyond 

visual line of sight successfully, whilst watching 

the whole flight from the ground station 

on the drone’s secondary forward-facing live 

camera. The applications here are immense. 

It is cheap, easy, and it works. The drone is 

flown at a variety of altitudes, depending on 

the mission at hand, at 65 kph (Figs 2 and 

3). The team have also tested the Mavic Pro 

Duo's infrared camera at night, which has 

successfully spotted small vessels in protected 

areas. It is likely that a combination of these 

two drones will fortify the conservation 

officers' efforts to clamp down on illegal 

fishers in the future, be it night or day. 

The use of drones in ecology is becoming 

more commonplace, with most scientists 

using ‘off-the-shelf’ UAVs to gather 

images of animals and plants, to estimate 

populations of species, to understand 

their dynamics and to monitor changes in 

habitats. Some scientists use multispectral 

cameras to detect subtle differences in foliage 

assemblages, whilst others use quadcopters 

to quickly survey small swathes of land or 

coast, looking for turtles, birds, or other large 

animals. But the use of fixed-wing UAVs in 

boat-based, remote maritime surveillance 

and ecology is still in its infancy and it is 

this frontier that Letessier and I are keen 

to explore. The next steps for the project 

see further trials in challenging and remote 

MPAs in the Pacific Ocean and looking at 

machine learning and digital asset management 

for the post-processing and data 

management side of the image collection. 

Melissa Schiele (melissa.schiele@gmail. 

com), Researcher and amphibious drone 

technician at the Zoological Society of 

London. 

b 

c 

d 



Alien invaders choke on parasite 

But can parasites impede the Mediterranean lionfish 

invasion? Periklis Kleitou and Jason Hall-Spencer 

investigate. 

Invasive species can thrive in new habitats because a 

scarcity of natural enemies gives them an advantage over 

their native competitors. This ‘enemy release hypothesis’ 

may explain why lionfish were able to spread so widely and 

so rapidly in the Western Atlantic Ocean. Greater lionfish 

abundance, growth, and size relative to native Indo-Pacific 

populations suggests release from natural controls such 

as competition, predation and parasitism. Lionfish in the 

western Atlantic were first introduced from aquaria and 

are several times less likely to be plagued by parasites than 

fish that are native to the region. In addition, the numbers 

of parasite per lionfish are lower than in the Indo-Pacific. 

Fish parasites have a range of negative effects on their 

hosts (stunting growth, reducing fecundity, increasing 

mortality rates) and a low susceptibility to parasitism 

may have aided the lionfish invasion in the Atlantic. 

Due to a lack of biosecurity measures in the Suez Canal, 

a 

the Mediterranean has the worst rate of marine invasions in 

the world: around 100 species of fish have already invaded 

this region from the Red Sea. These fish are bringing 

parasites with them. A recent study by Boussellaa and 

colleagues found that the invasive barracuda Sphyraena 

chrysotaenia has co-introduced three parasite species from 

the Red Sea and it has acquired six parasite species that 

are native to the Mediterranean (Boursella et al. 2018). 

A lionfish (Pterois miles) invasion has begun in the Mediterranean 

since a recent widening and deepening of the Suez 

Canal. In just five years, they have become common in 

Greece, Turkey, Lebanon and Israel, with a few individuals 

recently found as far west as Italy and Tunisia. Lionfish culled 

as part of the RELIONMED project (www.relionmed.eu) 

often have Cymothoidae isopod parasites. Antoniou et al. (in 

press) document these Nerocila bivittata as reproductive adults 

and juveniles on the skin and inner branchial cavity of lionfish 

hosts off South Cyprus (Fig. 1). More recently, copepods 

of the order Siphonostomatoida were found in the mouth 

of a lionfish infected by an intestinal pathogen (Fig. 2). 

Predators such as large groupers are rare in the overfished 

Mediterranean basin, but might parasites help control 

b 

c 

d 

Figure 1. The isopod crustacean Nerocila bivittata found parasitizing the lionfish Pterois miles in Cyprus. a, b. Larvigerous female. c. ‘Aster’ form. 

d. Male. Image © Antoniou et al. in press. 


Policy 

a 

b 

Figure 2. a) Siphonostomatoida copepods found in the mouth of lionfish. b) The intestines of the same individual were infected by an unknown 

pathogen. Images © P. Kleitou. 

lionfish populations? The barracuda 

study suggests not, since overall 

parasite richness, prevalence and 

intensity was much lower than found 

on invasive barracuda within their 

native range. Still, a lack of abundant 

cleaner fish in the Mediterranean 

may allow ectoparasites such as 

copepods and isopods to harm invasive 

lionfish. Further research is clearly 

needed to determine the sources 

and effects of lionfish parasites. 

Periklis Kleitou 

(periklis.kleitou@plymouth.ac.uk), 

Jason M Hall-Spencer (jason.hallspencer@plymouth.ac.uk) 

Further reading 

Marine policy: would a global 

network of marine stations give 

us a stronger voice? 

Antoniou, C., Kleitou, P., Crocetta, F., 

& Lorenti, M. (in press). First record of 

ectoparasitic isopods on the invasive 

lionfish Pterois miles (Bennett, 1828). 

Spixiana. 

Boussellaa, W., Neifar, L., Goedknegt, 

M.A., Thieltges, D.W. (2018). 

Lessepsian migration and parasitism: 

richness, prevalence and intensity of 

parasites in the invasive fish Sphyraena 

chrysotaenia compared to its native 

congener Sphyraena sphyraena in 

Tunisian coastal waters PeerJ 10.7717/ 

peerj.5558 

Sikkel, P. C., Tuttle, L. J., Cure, K., 

Coile, A. M., & Hixon, M. A. (2014). 

Low susceptibility of invasive red 

lionfish (Pterois volitans) to a generalist 

ectoparasite in both its introduced and 

native ranges. PloS one, 9(5), e95854. 

A World Association of Marine Stations by Matt Frost. 

In 2011 the Intergovernmental Oceanographic 

Commission (IOC) Assembly unanimously adopted 

a report on 4 July 2011 on the establishment of a 

‘World Association of Marine Stations (WAMS)’. This 

report, developed under the auspices of MARS (European 

Network of Marine Stations) and with the support of 

IOC-UNESCO, was aimed at providing a mechanism for 

collaboration, helping the marine community better support 

global goals for the ocean and giving it a stronger voice to 

champion the role of marine stations. There was, however, 

limited progress on this initiative for a number of years 

due to the lack of resources. Therefore, in 2018 delegates 

from MARS met with representatives from IOC-UNESCO 

to discuss a relaunched and repurposed WAMS with the 

United Nations to proclaim a Decade of Ocean Science for 

Sustainable Development. This would provide a valuable 

window of opportunity for WAMS to demonstrate its value. 

Today this work is achieving momentum, with interest 

and support from numerous regional and international 

Station Biologique de Roscoff. Image © W. Thomas / Station 

Biologique de Roscoff (CNRS/UPMC). 

networks. There is still much work to be done but it is vitally 

important, as collaboration has been at the heart of many 

major breakthroughs and achievements in marine biology. 

Marine stations, in particular, were never designed to operate 

in isolation, and the zoologist Anton Dorhn coined the 

term ‘Marine stations’ because he saw each individual site 

as analogous to a railway station, where a scientist could 

visit before returning or moving on to the next station. 

Most importantly, many marine stations are under 

threat and the ability to speak with a common voice in 

championing their value cannot be underestimated. 

Dr Matt Frost (matfr@mba.ac.uk), MBA Deputy Director and 

Head of Policy and Knowledge Exchange. 


Fantini, B. (2000). The "Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn" 

and the History of Embryology. The International Journal of 

Developmental Biology. 44: 523-535. 


The hidden wonders of our oceans 

The deep sea is poorly explored and vulnerable to man's 

activities. Alex Rogers introduces some of the remarkable 

facets of life in the deep and says better understanding is 

needed if we are to protect these remote ecosystems. 

The ocean comprises 1.3 billion cubic kilometres of 

water. With an average depth of just over 4 kilometres, 

most of it is deep sea and this is therefore the largest 

ecosystem on Earth. This vast, mostly dark and extremely 

cold habitat is mostly unexplored, and to study it we have 

to deploy technologies more akin to space exploration than 

modern ecology. My initial contact with the deep sea was 

during my first postdoctoral fellowship 

in the 1990s at the Marine Biological 

Association, on board the Royal 

Research Ship Discovery off the coast of 

Mauritania. The aim was to sample the 

pelagic fauna—the animals of the water 

column—in an area of upwelling, where nutrients rise with 

ocean currents from the deep sea to shallow waters, causing 

high primary production. It was an incredible experience. 

The animals we sampled lived, between 200 m and about 

1,000 m in the twilight zone or mesopelagic, where some 

sunlight is detectable but is insufficient for photosynthesis. 

As a result, they had evolved the most remarkable 

Animals have evolved the most 

remarkable adaptations to life 

in what to us would seem pure 

blackness 

adaptations to life in what to us would seem pure blackness, 

but where very dim blue-green light was still available. 

Fish typically had large, sometimes tubular eyes, positioned 

to look upwards for the silhouette of their prey 

against the downwelling light. Their supersensitive retinas 

and visual pigments were tuned in to the available wavelengths 

of light, or specifically to discriminate between natural 

illumination and bioluminescent light. Their prey often 

deployed a camouflage technique called bioluminescent 

counterillumination whereby photophores positioned along 

the ventral surface emitted light at a very similar wavelength 

to that of the sunlight coming from 

above, hiding the shadow of the animal. 

Bioluminescence was extremely common 

in animals from these depths, and was 

not only used as camouflage, but also to 

signal to members of the same species, 

to search for prey or to emit an intense display to confuse 

or distract predators. I will never forget seeing the jellyfish 

Atolla, a red and purple gelatinous disc with a cone-like 

structure projecting above the centre, radiating a bright and 

vivid purple flash running around and around the body. 

Above: Bubblegum coral, Atlantis Bank Seamount, 

Southwest Indian Ridge. Image © UCN/NERC Seamounts Project. 

12 The Marine Biologist | April 2019

Features 

Many years later in 2016 I sat glued to the porthole of the 

submersible Shinkai 6500 watching bioluminescent flashes 

down to more than 2,000 m in the central Indian Ocean. 

Another feature of the deep sea is that it is food limited. 

Most of the food on which the deep-water biota rely is 

produced in the upper 200 m of the ocean in the epipelagic 

zone. As the food sinks in the form of dead phytoplankton 

cells, zooplankton and other detritus, forming marine snow, 

it is consumed by animals and bacteria and so the supply 

of food decreases the further down you go. As a result of 

food scarcity, many of the animals of the mesopelagic zone 

had adaptations to ensure that they could eat whatever they 

came across. My favourite was the black devil anglerfish, a 

small fish which had a bioluminescent fishing rod to attract 

prey, a large mouth packed with curved teeth, and a very 

large stomach. The fish seemed to permanently express rage 

and came up in the nets still snapping voraciously for prey. 

Since that first cruise I have explored the deep ocean from 

polar latitudes to the tropics. You might be tempted to think 

that because of food limitation, life is scarce, but that could 

not be further from the truth. Whilst the abundance and 

biomass of life decreases with depth, species diversity peaks 

on the slopes that form the edges of the continents and 

oceanic islands at depths between 1,000 m and 3,000 m. 

We are not entirely sure why this is, but it is likely related to 

the effects of food supply on levels of competition between 

species. Put simply, in shallower waters there is lots of food, 

so some species tend to dominate the ecosystems of the 

coast and continental shelves, depressing the overall diversity 

of the community. As you get very deep then lack of food 

depresses diversity but even so, there is life in the very deepest 

part of the ocean, the Challenger Deep in the Marianas 

Trench at nearly 11,000 m, deeper than Everest is tall. 

We have also discovered that there is much more variety 

in the types of habitats that occur in the deep ocean than 

we previously suspected. There are seamounts—underwater 

Black devil angler fish, Melanocetus johnsoni. Southwest Indian Ridge. 

Image © IUCN/NERC Seamounts Project. 

mountains that harbour rich communities of corals 

and other life that benefit from the vigorous currents 

which bring ample food to these localities. Seamounts 

are particularly associated with cold-water coral reefs, 

frameworks formed by stony corals that, because of their 

extreme three-dimensional complexity, harbour a wealth 

of other species. In the late 1970s deep-sea hydrothermal 

vents or hot springs were discovered. Here, waters up 

to 400°C or more flow out of the seabed, sometimes as 

conspicuous black smokers. The fluids are rich in reduced 

chemicals like hydrogen sulphide, which can be oxidised by 

bacteria and archaea to produce energy for carbon fixation. 

This process is called chemosynthesis and hydrothermal 

vents host dense communities of specially adapted animals 

found nowhere else in the ocean, either eating bacteria or 

in a symbiotic relationship with them. In 2009–2011, I 

ROV Isis being launched in the snow, East 

Scotia Ridge, Scotia Sea. Image © NERC 

CHESSO Project. 

Lophelia pertusa forming cold-water coral reef on Anton Dohrn Seamount, NE Atlantic. Image © 

NERC Deeplinks Project. 


Features 

Heaps of yeti crabs (Kiwa hirsuta), E9 hydrothermal vent site, East 

Scotia Ridge, Scotia Sea. Image © NERC CHESSO Project. 

participated in several expeditions to locate and survey the 

first hydrothermal vents discovered in the Southern Ocean. 

They were inhabited by piles of yeti crabs (Kiwa hirsuta), 

a white squat lobster with a hairy chest on which it grows 

chemosynthetic bacteria which it combs off with its claws 

to eat. The crustacean was nicknamed the ‘Hoff crab’ after 

the actor David Hasselhoff of Baywatch fame who has a 

notably hairy chest. Some types of hydrothermal vents 

may have conditions 

very similar to those 

when life began on Earth 

and it is this discovery 

that has initiated the search for a second genesis of life 

in the solar system. Some of the moons of Jupiter and 

Saturn are known to have ice-covered seas and there is 

evidence that some of them, for example Enceladus, 

host hydrothermal vents (see also article on page 17). 

The deep ocean may seem remote but it is an integral part 

of the Earth system. It provides obvious ecosystem services 

like food in the form of fish, but also many less obvious 

ones that are potentially more important to humankind. 

These include the ability to take up and store carbon 

dioxide, to circulate nutrients around the global ocean and 

to maintain our atmosphere at a comfortable temperature 

through the thermohaline circulation—the movement of 

water from the polar oceans through the deep sea to the 

tropics. Remarkable as it may seem, humans have begun to 

impact this largest of ecosystems through both the direct 

and indirect effects of our activities. My first experience of 

this was looking at the potential of oil and gas exploration to 

damage reefs formed by the cold-water coral Lophelia pertusa 

in the waters of the north-east Atlantic. I was an expert 

witness in a Judicial Review brought by Greenpeace against 

the UK Government and several oil companies regarding 

application of the European Habitats Directive to deep-sea 

ecosystems. The case pivoted on whether the coral was able 

to form reefs in the deep sea, which the Judge found to be 

the case, and since then the Habitats Directive has extended 

Some species of black corals 

could live for up to 4,000 years 

to the edge of the European Exclusive Economic Zone (the 

waters out to 200 nautical miles beyond the coast). Since 

then we have seen the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon 

disaster on the deep-sea corals of the Gulf of Mexico. 

More serious in terms of area of impact have been the 

effects of deep-sea bottom trawling on seamount and coral 

ecosystems in the deep sea. Fishing for deep-sea fish on 

seamounts began in the late 1960s in the North Pacific 

and spread over the subsequent decades to seamounts 

across the ocean. The targeted species, including pelagic 

armourhead (Pseudopentaceros wheeleri), orange roughy 

(Hoplostethus atlanticus), oreos (Oreosomatidae) and 

cardinal fish (Epigonus spp.) turned out to have unusual 

life histories compared to shallow-water fish. Orange 

roughy, for example, live to 150 years, do not mature until 

they are 30–40 years old, and form dense aggregations 

over seamounts to spawn. These features made them, 

and other deep-sea species, very vulnerable to overfishing. 

However, the method of fishing, bottom trawling, 

also proved to be highly destructive to seabed ecosystems 

formed by fragile corals. It was subsequently discovered 

that cold-water coral reefs were thousands of years old and 

some species of black corals (Antipatharia) could live for 

up to 4,000 years or more. Such ecosystems have shown 

little recovery from the damage wrought by deep-sea 

trawling and we still have little idea of how widespread 

loss of coral habitat has been from this type of fishing. 

Because deep-sea communities are reliant on surface 

primary production and many of them have evolved 

in ecosystems which show little annual variation in 

temperature, they are also vulnerable to the effects of 

climate change. Surface phytoplankton and zooplankton 

communities are responding very rapidly to changes in 

sea surface temperature and ocean stratification, and this 

affects both the quantity of food sinking into the deep 

sea and its quality. It is known from interannual observations 

of the megabenthos (animals that can be seen on 

cameras) that such changes can cause rapid change in the 

abundance and diversity of animals on the deep seabed. 

Our own observations of the small animals that live on or 

in deep-sea sediments in the northwest Atlantic show that 

temperature rises of a single degree centigrade can have a 

dramatic impact on community structure. Add to this the 

effects of ocean acidification and increasing hypoxia in the 

deep sea, both results of CO 2 

emissions, and it is clear that 

such communities are highly vulnerable to climate change. 

In 2011 we discovered microplastic fibres in all of our 

samples from seamounts in the southern Indian Ocean. Not 

only were the plastics in the sediment samples, but also on 

many of the animals such as corals, and even inside them. 

Opposite page. Top: Rabbit fish (Chimaera monstrosa). Bottom: Stalked 

barnacles (Vulcanolepas scotiaensis) and anemones, E9 hydrothermal 

vent site, East Scotia Ridge, Scotia Sea. Image © NERC CHESSO 

Project. 


Section name 


Features 

The effects of such contamination are 

unknown. At present it is estimated 

that 8 million tonnes or more of 

plastic is entering the ocean every 

year and a significant fraction of this 

is ending up in the deep sea. New 

human activities in the ocean are on 

the horizon including deep-sea mining, 

offshore aquaculture and even fishing 

of mesopelagic fish communities. 

Our experience has been one where 

a pattern of resource discovery in the 

ocean has been closely followed by 

exploitation. Only years afterwards has 

science and management caught up to 

reveal the impacts of activities such as 

deep-sea fishing. The unique ecology 

of deep-sea species: stenothermy, 

limited food supplies, slow growth 

and slow reproduction all render them 

highly vulnerable to changes in the 

physical environment or to increased 

mortality from, for example, fishing. 

For this reason, new foundations 

such as Nekton and REV Ocean are 

setting out to explore these remote 

ecosystems, to try and understand how 

life is distributed throughout the ocean 

and how it is connected from place 

to place, and also what the impacts 

of human activities are on habitats 

like seamounts and cold-water coral 

reefs or gardens. Only by gathering 

such knowledge is it possible to make 

knowledge-based decisions about how 

to manage our activities in the ocean 

and to innovate to prevent damage to 

deep-sea and other marine ecosystems. 

Alex Rogers 

(alex.rogers@revocean.org) 

Alex Rogers is the author of a new 

book about the deep ocean and other 

marine ecosystems. It is an honest 

description of the damage we are 

doing to these ecosystems and what 

we can do to help reduce our impacts 

both as a society and as individuals. 

The Deep: The Hidden Wonders of 

Our Oceans and How We Can Protect 

Them is published in April 2019 by 

Wildfire. 


https://nektonmission.org 

https://revocean.org 

A note on cold-water coral taxonomy 

Cold-water stony corals form amazing reefs in deep, dark conditions at the 

edges of continental shelves and on seamounts, within a temperature 

range of 4–13°C. Such reefs can occur as shallow as 40 m depth in 

Norwegian fjords, but in tropical regions the minimum depth lies at about 

400 m. These corals are very slow-growing, long-lived, and fragile. The 

reefs are now being damaged by deep-water trawling for fish, deep-sea 

mining for minerals and drilling for oil. Climate warming will have an 

additional influence on their depth limits and geographical distribution. 

Figure 1. Lophelia pertusa, a cold-water stony coral. Image © A.J. Southward. 

In the Atlantic Ocean the predominant cold-water reef builder is the stony 

coral known as Lophelia pertusa (Fig. 1), accompanied by a variety of other corals 

and a remarkable associated fauna, much studied in recent years. 

Marine ecologists may be surprised to learn that a new name of Desmophyllum 

pertusa, proposed in 2016, is now listed as the accepted name of this species by 

the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), but with the following comment 

by the coral expert S. Cairns: ‘Based on molecular evidence, Addamo et al. (2012) 

first suggested that Lophelia be synonymized with Desmophyllum, and later 

Addamo et al. (2016) formally stated that Lophelia was a junior synonym. The 

basic difference between the two taxa is that Desmophyllum is solitary and Lophelia 

colonial, which to a traditional morphologist like me is a significant one. Lophelia 

is one of the few cosmopolitan scleractinian species, and is also one of the most 

studied species in the order, especially in the North Atlantic. To change its 

nomenclature with the possibility that it might have to revert to the original 

would cause much taxonomic confusion. My molecular colleagues convinced me 

to be cautious and wait for the next two or three studies to be published on the 

matter, in which more genes may be used.’ 

Eve Southward (eveuth@MBA.ac.uk), MBA Honorary Fellow. 


Freiwald, A. et al. (2004). Cold-water Coral Reefs, out of sight - no longer out of 

mind. UNEP-WCMC, Cambridge, UK. http://www.unep-cmc.org/resources/ 

publications/UNEP_WCMC_bio_series/22.htm 

Addamo, A.M. et al. (2016). Merging scleractinian genera: the overwhelming 

genetic similarity between solitary Desmophyllum and colonial Lophelia. Evolutionary 

Biology DOI 10.1186/s12862-016-0654-8 


Recreating 

Extraterrestrial 

Oceans 

Lorna Campbell explains how a 

particle accelerator is teaching us 

about the ocean on one of Saturn's 

moons. 

One of the amazing things scientists 

can do at the UK’s national 

synchrotron, Diamond Light 

Source, is recreate conditions in other 

parts of the Universe. Recently they 

used this remarkable ability to peer into 

the salty waters hidden underneath 

kilometres of ice on Enceladus, one of 

Saturn’s moons. Enceladus is one of the 

few places in the Solar System where 

liquid water is known to exist, and its 

deep ocean is one of the most promising 

places to look for extraterrestrial life. 

A team of experimental astrophysicists 

based at Diamond and Keele 

University (UK) have been recreating 

Enceladus’s salty ocean in Oxfordshire. 

They have been using Diamond’s 

astoundingly bright light to investigate 

one of the more mysterious properties 

of water—its ability to form clathrates 

when cooled under pressure. Clathrates 

are ice-like structures that behave like 

tiny cages, and can trap molecules 

such as carbon dioxide and methane. 

The conditions on Enceladus may 

be just right for the formation of 

clathrates, and understanding more 

about how they form could provide 

clues about what is happening in 

Enceladus’s ocean. For the experiments 

at Diamond, the researchers filled 

tiny tubes with water and different 

amounts of magnesium sulphate. 

The tubes were cooled down, and 

carbon dioxide was fed into the frozen 

water, where it became trapped in the 

clathrates that formed in the tubes. 

Shining Diamond’s high energy 

X-rays into the tubes allowed the 

scientists to examine what was 

happening, using a technique called 

X-ray Power Diffraction. The way in 

which X-rays were deflected by the 

contents of the sample tube showed 

how the molecules of water, gas and 

salt interacted. Compared to previous 

experiments using pure water, 

the presence of magnesium sulphate 

interfered with clathrate formation 

in much the same way that putting 

table salt on a slippery path in winter 

The deep ocean of 

Enceladus is one of the most 

promising places to look for 

extraterrestrial life 

melts the ice. The results also showed 

that the salt causes subtle changes 

that make clathrates more likely to 

sink. If clathrates filled with carbon 

dioxide are sinking to the bottom of 

the ocean, that may be a good place 

to start looking for signs of life. 

Features 

The enhanced colour view of Enceladus seen 

here is largely of the southern hemisphere 

and includes the south polar terrain at the 

bottom of the image. Image credit: NASA/JPL/ 

Space Science Institute. 

The advantage of using Diamond is 

that lots of data can be gathered very 

quickly. Sarah Day, Senior Support 

Scientist at Diamond, is excited to 

be able to match results from experiments 

here on Earth with what we 

already know about Enceladus. 

‘Creating that link is very exciting, 

matching up with what might be 

happening on other worlds,’ she said. 

Clathrates are just as important 

on Earth. Millions of tonnes of 

methane are tied up in clathrates in 

the deep oceans and arctic permafrost. 

Understanding their behaviour could 

be valuable as climate change warms 

up these previously frozen regions. 

Lorna Campbell (lorna.campbell@ 

diamond.ac.uk) 

A dramatic plume sprays water, ice and vapour from the south polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus. Cassini's first hint of this plume came 

during the spacecraft's first close flyby of the icy moon on February 17, 2005. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute. 


Altered states: a change in 

the coastal ecosystems of 

the North-east Pacific 

From Alaska to northern Mexico there have been widespread and 

persistent losses of kelp forests. We spoke to environmental scientist 

Cynthia Catton to find out more. 

Kelp forests flourish in nutrientrich 

temperate ecosystems 

around the world. On the 

west coast of North America, lush, 

productive kelp forests are found 

from Alaska to Baja California 

(Fig. 1). When under stress, these 

coastal ecosystems may shift to 

food-limited low-productivity urchin 

barrens. In northern California, an 

unprecedented and extreme version 

of this ecosystem shift has occurred. 

This has severely disrupted ecosystem 

services such as providing food and 

habitat supporting rich biodiversity 

and economically important fisheries, 

coastal protection from wave 

exposure, and carbon sequestration. 

Trouble on the horizon 

Dr Cynthia Catton is an Environmental 

Scientist with the California 

Department of Fish and Wildlife, and 

is a lead on a programme that has surveyed 

the nearshore waters of northern 

California for 20 years. ‘In 2014 the 

canopy-forming kelp species that is 

the foundation of our kelp forests had 

declined dramatically. We had also 

started to see more small urchins than 

usual.’ Since those initial observations, 

Catton and many others have witnessed 

profound state changes in kelp 

forests in the North-east Pacific region. 

Beyond urchin barrens 

Multiple coinciding large-scale 

impacts have catalysed this extreme 

ecosystem response. The first was a 

widespread starfish mass mortality 

which depleted more than 20 starfish 

species from Alaska to Mexico, starting 

in 2013. Starfish are important 

predators of urchins and other shellfish 

species. In 2014, a series of consecutive 

years of warm water conditions 

started to impact northern California, 

due to a combination of an extreme 

marine heatwave (2014–15), popularly 

known as ‘the blob’, and a strong 

El Niño (2015–16). Normally, the 

northern California coast is supplied 

with nutrient-rich upwelling waters 

of 10–12°C. At temperatures above 

12°C, nutrient levels are low in this 

region. At temperatures over 16°C, 

cold-loving species begin to show 

signs of warm water stress. Starting 

in 2014, nearshore subtidal water 

temperatures in the kelp forests 

regularly reached 14°C, and peaked 

at 18°C. The combination of nutrient 

limitation and thermal stress was a 

double whammy for northern California 

kelp species which contributed 

to the recruitment failure in 2014. 

In 2014 there were widespread failures 

of bull kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana, 

Fig. 2) growth, resulting in more than 

a 90% loss of canopy area relative to 

previous years over about 250 km of 

the northern California coastline (Fig. 

3). High variability of canopy growth 

Figure 2. In cold, northern Pacific waters, the annual bull kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana, pictured) 

forms part of the canopy-forming assemblage of kelp forests. Image © Kevin Joe, CDFW. 


from year to year is not uncommon, 

but persistent low canopy growth 

associated with high urchin numbers 

over multiple years is very unusual. 

The failure of the canopy-forming 

algae had set the stage for competition 

for food among grazing invertebrates. 

In response, urchins emerged from 

nooks and crannies and formed ‘feeding 

fronts’. They also invested energy in 

bulking up their jaws, enabling them 

to feed on barnacles, sponges, and calcified, 

encrusting algae. In 2015 there 

was 60 times the number of purple 

urchins (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) 

compared to the long-term average. 

The aggressive grazing pressure effectively 

maintained low food availability 

for other economically important 

grazers, particularly red urchins (Mesocentrotus 

franciscanus) and red abalone 

(Haliotis rufescens) (Figs 4 & 5). 

‘In Northern California, seastars 

[starfish] were effectively wiped out 

in 2013 releasing many urchins from 

early life history predation,’ explains 

Catton, ‘so we started to see a lot of 

small urchins. Now we see large areas 

of reef that are bare rock; the system 

has progressed beyond what we typically 

think of as an urchin barren.’ 

Scientists came together late 

in 2018 to share reports of major 

urchin barrens from Baja California 

to Alaska. The bigger picture raised 

more questions than it answered; 

for example, the timing of starfish 

wasting in different locations followed 

no discernible pattern. In addition, 

each area responded differently, 

depending on local conditions. 

Off Monterey, just south of San 

Francisco, bull kelp and giant kelp 

a 

(Macrocystis pyrifera) co-occur, and 

support healthy populations of sea 

otters. Despite continued sea otter 

predation, patchy urchin barrens have 

also formed in the Monterey area. 

Effects on coastal communities 

in northern California 

The consequences for fisheries and 

on coastal communities in northern 

California have been dire. The gonads 

(or roe) of the red urchin are sold 

as uni making it the target of one 

of California's most lucrative fisheries. 

Today, there are plenty of both 

red and purple urchins, but severe 

starvation conditions have limited 

gonad development so that many 

have no commercial value, and since 

2015, fewer fishers have been active 

over time. In 2018, the culturally 

important recreational red abalone 

fishery was closed for the first time. 

Meanwhile, coastal communities are 

exploring ways to adapt to the ‘new 

Figure 3. a) View of bull kelp as seen at Ocean Cove, northern California, in the heart of the red 

abalone fishery area in 2012. Image © Kevin Joe, CDFW. b) The same view in 2016. Image 

© Dr Cynthia Catton, CDFW. 

Figure 4. Purple urchins on urchin barrens, northern California. Image © Dr Cynthia Catton, 

CDFW. Inset: Starving and dead abalone. Until 2017, Northern California had the last remaining 

fishery for red abalone. Image © Kevin Joe, CDFW. 

b 

normal’, for example, developing aquaculture 

to exploit purple urchins, and 

applying the newly abundant urchin 

tests to the land as a soil improver. 

The future: action or adaptation? 

Are there management actions 

that can help recovery of these Pacific 

coastal ecosystems? The magnitude of 

impacts and uncertainties about what 

will happen next mean that, for now 

at least, scientists and managers are 

having to wait and see. The priority 

is to understand the fundamental 

ecology of the system at the local and 

regional scales, or as Catton puts it, 

‘We need to understand how feedback 

between different stressors is affected 

by the common features and unique 

aspects of each area’. Scientists and 

managers across state and national 

borders are seeking support to bring 

together marine ecologists, oceanographers 

and population geneticists in 

order to establish a more systematic 

approach to these problems. 

In northern California, the community 

has come together to find 

a positive path forward in the face 

of big changes and uncertainty. 

Dr Cynthia Catton (Cynthia.Catton@ 

wildlife.ca.gov) is an environmental 

scientist with the California 

Department of Fish and Wildlife. 

Guy Baker Mem.MBA 

(guba@mba.ac.uk) 


Features 

A sustainable 

harvest? 

Dan Smale explains the 

controversy around the proposed 

exploitation of kelp forests in 

Scotland. 

Currently, commercial-scale 

harvesting of wild kelp occurs in, 

amongst other nations, Norway, 

France, Chile, Peru, China and 

Japan. Kelps are primarily harvested 

for alginate, which has a wide range 

of applications including cosmetics, 

pharmaceuticals, textiles and in human 

food. Kelp biomass is also used for 

animal feed and fertilizer and, more 

recently, as the primary substrate for 

biofuel production, with mixed results. 

To be economically viable, kelp 

harvesting operations must extract 

large quantities of biomass. Whole 

or partial kelp plants are ripped from 

the underlying rocky seabed (Fig. 

1), which also removes any attached 

marine flora (e.g. red seaweeds) and 

fauna (e.g. sponges, bryozoans, ascidians, 

and mobile invertebrates). Most 

countries that commercially harvest 

kelp regulate and manage the industry 

by setting quotas and rotating harvest 

sites, although the sustainability 

and efficacy of some management 

approaches has been questioned. 

Kelp forests are incredibly extensive 

and productive. In the North-east 

Figure 1. Harvesting kelp in Norway. Image © Eli Rinde. 

Figure 2. A kelp forest in Scotland. Image © Dan Smale. 

Atlantic alone, the dominant species, 

Laminaria hyperborea (see Fig. 2), 

covers an area in excess of 18,000 

km 2 . Due to its abundance, high 

rates of growth and rapid recovery 

following physical disturbance, 

kelp does have the potential to be 

harvested sustainably. Indeed, some 

regions in Norway and France have 

been intensively harvested for several 

decades and, although concerns have 

been raised, kelp populations and 

their associated communities persist. 

In 2018, the Highlands and 

Islands Enterprise (HIE, a Scottish 

Government agency) commissioned 

a study to examine the feasibility of 

commercial-scale mechanical harvesting 

of Scottish kelp. The report, 

which I co-authored, concluded that 

this resource has the potential to be 

exploited sustainably, provided that 

critical knowledge gaps are addressed 

with rigorous field-based research, 

adequate resources are made available 

for monitoring and licensing, and 

that management approaches are 

adaptive and conservative. Crucially, 

the report concluded that more 

fundamental ecological research 

on the drivers of variability in the 

structure of kelp populations and their 

associated communities, as well as 

standing stock biomass, was needed to 

underpin any management actions. 

Also in 2018, a Scottish owned 

and based biotechnology company, 

Marine Biopolymers Ltd (MBL), 

commissioned a scoping report as a 

first step towards applying for a licence 

from Marine Scotland to mechanically 

harvest wild kelp populations. 

The scoping report, which was largely 

based on the HIE assessment, stated 

that MBL intended to extract up to 

34,000 tonnes (c. 20 million tonnes of 

wet weight) of Laminaria hyperborea 

per year, equivalent to 0.15% of the 

total standing stock in Scotland. The 

report argued the economic benefit 

of harvesting, estimating that the 

activity would eventually sustain 

around 40 full-time jobs, and outlined 

a framework for legislation, impact 

assessment and sustained monitoring. 

The report also identified a large 

number of potentially important 

issues and uncertainties—such as how 


Features 

removal of kelp habitat alters hydrodynamics, 

coastal erosion, associated 

fisheries and carbon cycling—that 

would require further work during 

the formal licensing procedure. 

The scoping report was subsequently 

made available for informal public 

consultation, prompting impassioned 

responses from a number of stakeholders. 

Perhaps most importantly, 

social media campaigns, endorsed by 

high-profile broadcasters including 

Sir David Attenborough and Hugh 

Fearnley-Whittingstall, quickly 

gathered momentum, raising awareness 

of the issue and engaging effectively 

with a diverse audience (for example 

#NoKelpDredge and @SaveKelp on 

Twitter). Several eminent marine 

scientists also contributed opinion 

pieces to regional and national publications, 

generally in strong opposition 

to the proposed harvesting. In this 

highly emotive atmosphere, factual, 

evidence-based arguments were 

sometimes lost in favour of subjective 

opinion from both sides of the debate. 

In November 2018 the Scottish 

Government amended the Crown 

Estate Bill to ban mechanical 

removal of kelp populations. Whilst 

demonstrating a commendable 

precautionary approach, the decision 

was not based on sound scientific 

evidence. Fundamental information on 

kelp harvesting has the 

potential to be conducted 

sustainably, provided that it is 

properly regulated 

recovery rates, environmental drivers 

of primary productivity, patterns 

of genetic diversity and population 

structure, interactions between kelp 

extraction and other stressors such as 

ocean warming, and wider implications 

for ecosystem services like biogenic 

coastal defence and carbon cycling is 

lacking. As such, it is not currently 

possible to conduct a risk-benefit 

analysis to inform decision-making. 

Whilst I personally support the ban, 

I would rather such decisions were 

impartial and objective, rather than 

the unsatisfactory ‘whoever shouts 

loudest wins’ approach described 

here, which ultimately leaves 

certain stakeholders understandably 

frustrated and disillusioned with 

the decision-making process. 

The resources available for monitoring 

and research into kelp forests in 

the UK are negligible compared to, 

for example, kelp forests in Norway, 

Australia and California. Kelp forests 

are gaining recognition for the 

ecological goods and services they 

provide, but a considerable research 

effort is needed to better understand 

how these critically important habitats 

function and how they are responding 

to environment change, and 

whether they can offer additional 

ecosystem services. An opportunity 

to do so may have been lost. 

Dan Smale (dansma@mba.ac.uk) 

MBA Research Fellow. 

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The South Georgia 

and South Sandwich 

Islands Marine 

Protected Area 

Figure 1. A view of South Georgia from the 

north. Image © Argos Froyanes. 

The SGSSI MPA is one of the 

largest in the world. In the wake of 

its first review, we spoke to Peter 

Thomson of Argos Froyanes 

Ltd. to find out about the fishery 

for Patagonian toothfish that 

underwrites the MPA. 

South Georgia and the South 

Sandwich Islands (SGSSI) are 

a British Overseas Territory in 

the South Atlantic. South Georgia is 

a mountainous island 165 km long 

with a rugged coastline characterized 

by fjords and islets (Fig. 1). The 

South Sandwich Islands are an island 

arc of active and inactive volcanoes 

notable for their remoteness, high 

waves, and lack of a natural harbour. 

The productive sub-Antarctic waters 

surrounding these islands support 

globally important populations of 

seabirds such as albatross, petrels 

and penguins, and mammals such 

as Antarctic fur seals (Fig. 3), 

Figure 2. Covering 1.07 million km 2 of the south Atlantic the South 

Georgia and South Sandwich Islands MPA is one of the world's largest. 

southern elephant seals, and southern 

right whales, sei, fin, humpback, 

minke, blue, and sperm whales. 

Cruise tourism is increasingly 

popular around these islands but the 

most important resource, generating 

65% of total government revenues, is 

the fishery for Patagonian toothfish. In 

fact, South Georgia celebrates September 

4 as Toothfish Day. Established in 

2012, the purpose of the SGSSI MPA 

is to conserve marine 

biodiversity, habitats 

and critical ecosystem 

function, and to 

ensure that human 

activities, especially fishing for krill and 

toothfish, are managed to minimize 

impact on the marine environment. 

The key management measures 

applying to fishing are: a complete ban 

on bottom trawling, depth restrictions 

on bottom fishing; spatial and temporal 

closure of the krill fishery to protect 

land-based foraging 

animals; and 

no-take zones for 

benthic features 

such as seamounts 

and hydrothermal 

vents. Within 

the MPA a total 

of 92% of the 

seafloor is completely 

protected 

from fishing 

activity, and 23% 

is no-take zone 

protected from any 

South Georgia 

celebrates September 4 

as Toothfish Day 

form of extraction 

(Fig. 2). 

The Maritime Zone of SGSSI 

is within the area regulated by the 

Commission for the Conservation of 

Antarctic Marine Living Resources. 

Within the CCAMLR area interested 

nations govern by consensus 

and its rules allow ‘rational use’ of 

marine life under precautionary, 

ecosystem-based management. 

Found in sub-Antarctic waters, 

Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus 

eleginoides) are the 

dominant predatory 

fish of the southern 

ocean. They can live for 

over 50 years and reach 

up to 2 m in length. Toothfish were 

first commercially targeted around 

South Georgia by longline vessels 

in 1988, and CCAMLR conservation 

measures and monitoring 

commenced in the mid-90s. 

Objectives for the management 

of the toothfish fishery in the new 

MPA exceed CCAMLR conservation 

measures (catch target of 55% of 

estimated pre-exploitation biomass 

compared to 50% set by CCAMLR). 

This equates to 2,200t of Patagonian 

toothfish per annum. See Box 1. 

Measures to reduce seabird mortality 

associated with longlining include: 

seasonal closures permitting fishing 

only in winter; requirements to set 

hooks at night; ‘blacking out’ of 

vessels, and weighted fishing lines to 

sink quickly. These measures have been 

very successful: since 1997 there has 

been a 99% reduction in bird by-catch. 

By-catch limits are also set for other 

non-target species, including skate and 


Features 

Macrourus spp. (grenadier). Research 

projects are ongoing to monitor bycatch 

and ensure limits are sustainable. 

Sperm whales and orcas pursue 

longline vessels and are able to strip 

some or all of the catch from a line. 

Strategies to thwart this unwelcome 

attention include leaving lines on 

the seabed where the catch is beyond 

the diving range of orcas, or simply 

steaming away at full speed. The 

loss due to depredation by toothed 

whales is estimated at 5% of the total 

catch, necessitating a reduction in 

the catch limit for the fleet in order 

to maintain safe extraction limits. 

In 2014 the toothfish fishery 

was certified with no conditions 

for the third time by the Marine 

Stewardship Council (MSC), scoring 

an average of 96 out of 100 

against the three MSC principles, 

making it one of the world's highestscoring 

fisheries on these criteria. 

In 2018 the SGSSI MPA was subject 

to its first review by an advisory group 

made up of representatives from the 

scientific community, NGOs, and 

the fishing and tourism industries. 

A substantial body of scientific 

literature has accumulated since 2013, 

greatly advancing our understanding 

of South Georgia’s marine environment. 

Knowledge and evidence for 

the South Sandwich Islands area is 

less detailed, however, and the advisory 

group cautioned against using 

evidence from South Georgia to make 

decisions affecting the whole MPA. 

Figure 3. Antarctic fur seal. Image © Argos 

Froyanes. 

Box 1. Longlining for Patagonian toothfish 

Longlining is a commercial fishing technique employing baited hooks set at 

intervals on lines that can be many kilometres long. The six demersal (seabed) 

longline vessels operating around South Georgia are highly regulated and have 

been designed to maximize sustainability and crew safety. Three of the vessels 

are British registered and operated by Argos Froyanes (AF). 

All AF vessels carry two scientific observers at all times, and electronic 

monitoring is now mandatory for all South Georgia longline vessels. CCTV 

records setting and hauling of hooks and is used for compliance as well as 

helping fulfil the requirement to support scientific research. As AF Chief Executive 

Peter Thomson says: ‘We’ve become science junkies’. 

Top left: Attaching cameras to hooks. Top right: Hauling the catch in the moonpool. Bottom: 

Toothfish are tagged for scientific research. Images © Argos Froyanes. 

The advisory group considered 

climate change to be the most serious 

threat to the SGSSI ecosystem, and 

a challenge for managing the MPA 

is to ensure that current measures 

remain effective as species and ecosystems 

respond to warming seas. 

The advisory group concluded 

that overall the MPA is achieving its 

intended objectives, and following 

the review, the Government have 

enhanced the existing protection 

measures by greatly increasing the 

existing fishery no-take zones. 

The NGO representatives' call 

for a marine sanctuary, providing 

complete protection for the South 

Sandwich Islands, was rejected. 

The SGSSI MPA is hugely important 

as a refuge for Arctic and subarctic 

birds, mammals, fish, invertebrates, 

and seabed life. Considered to be 

achieving its conservation objectives, 

the precautionary and evidence-based 

management of the SGSSI MPA 

and the toothfish fishery is a cause 

for celebration. The wider Southern 

Ocean is a key region of the Earth 

system where sustainable use under 

the remit of CCAMLR must take 

precedence over the economic interests 

of individual states. Interested 

nations must continue to support the 

current consensus management. 

Guy Baker Mem.MBA 

(guba@mba.ac.uk) 

Peter Thomson 

(peter.thomson@argosfroyanes.com) 

Chief Executive, Argos Froyanes. 


For more information about the 

SGSSI MPA, visit www.gov.gs 


Features 

Planting 

trees to 

conserve 

seagrass 

Measures to remediate these 

vital habitats are often within 

reach of communities, say 

Richard Unsworth and Leanne 

Cullen-Unsworth. 

With the exception of the 

Antarctic, seagrass meadows 

are present along all the world's 

coastlines, where they create a habitat 

that supports fisheries, biodiversity 

and other vital services such as carbon 

storage. These meadows consist of 

underwater flowering plants that mostly 

grow in shallow waters and cover at 

least 325,000 km 2 of our shallow seas. 

Their high productivity means that 

many seagrass meadows store carbon 

dioxide at up to 35 times the rate 

of rainforests, and that 20% of the 

world's biggest fisheries are supported 

by seagrass as fish nursery habitats. 

These habitats are undergoing global 

loss. This is not because of difficult-tosolve 

global issues, but mostly because 

they go under the conservation radar 

and suffer from problems such as poor 

water quality (mostly high nutrients), 

coastal development and sometimes 

even deliberate removal to make way 

for a golden beach. Due to a paucity of 

global data, long-term trends are difficult 

to understand. However, where 

information is available, rates of loss are 

as high as one football field per hour. 

Many authors have noted that seagrasses 

have a charisma problem—they 

are green and do not have the visual 

appeal of habitats such as coral reefs. 

We have clear data showing the higher 

level of research and conservation 

investment in other habitats relative 

Figure 1. Seagrass meadows are home to an array of invertebrates that are exploited by people 

all around the world. In many places such as Indonesia this is a whole family activity. 

Image © R.K.F. Unsworth. 

to seagrass. It has been speculated 

that up to 1 billion people live within 

50 km of a seagrass meadow, but 

most of those people would never 

have heard of these amazing plants. 

The lack of investment in seagrass 

conservation is at odds with evidence 

that shows seagrasses have more 

resilience to a changing climate 

than habitats such as coral reefs. 

Seagrasses in Southeast Asia are of 

particular importance, as the region 

may contain the world's largest seagrass 

areas. However, data are scarce, and 

many areas are largely unmapped. 

In Indonesia alone, seagrass beds 

and mangrove stands are thought to 

hold some 17 per cent of the world’s 

blue carbon reservoir. With a rapidly 

growing population, the region is 

also at the forefront of biodiversity 

loss due to increasing demands on 

water resources, land, fisheries, and 

minerals creating a mix that is altering 

the structure of its coastal seas. 

Our research has demonstrated 

that large-scale loss of seagrass is 

taking place in the majority of 21 

areas examined across this vast 

archipelago. Only the remotest 

areas of seagrass were unscathed. 

These sorts of trends are mirrored 

by losses at other sites in the region; 

for example, widespread seagrass loss 

has been observed in the Philippines, 

Singapore and Thailand. Seagrass loss 

is vast, and largely needless, but the 

support of NGOs and governments 


Features 

is not there as ever-increasing 

conservation funds are ploughed 

into saving the last coral reefs. 

Seagrass meadows support fisheries 

by acting as important nursery 

habitats for young fish, and providing 

habitat for larger predatory fish and for 

invertebrates such as sea cucumbers, 

bivalves, gastropods and urchins. In 

Southeast Asia many hundreds of 

millions of people depend on catching 

their seafood daily. With the degradation 

of reefs increasing rapidly, seagrass 

meadows are an increasingly vital piece 

in the marine seascape. With limited 

gear it is possible to fish in these 

productive habitats easily and catch a 

day's food (Figs 1 & 2). Research in 

a range of localities across Southeast 

Asia has revealed how seagrass meadows 

are vital for local food supply. 

Back in 2012, we (at Swansea and 

Cardiff University) commenced a 

research and conservation project 

aligned to a small community NGO 

(Forkani) at Kaledupa island in a 

marine park in eastern Indonesia. The 

aim was to understand the value of 

seagrass to local people and the local 

threats to these systems. Ultimately, we 

aimed to develop conservation measures 

for seagrass. Our project revealed that at 

least 50% (up to 80% in some locations) 

of the fish locally landed was associated 

with seagrass and that there was 

widespread consumption of invertebrate 

animals also found in seagrass. However, 

evidence also mounted as to the 

local threats to these systems, namely 

catchment degradation and poor water 

quality. Local opinions also highlighted 

the role of sedimentation as a threat to 

seagrass. Years of turning the forest into 

farmland and damage to river banks had 

increased runoff into rivers, smothering 

seagrass meadows are vital for 

local food supply 

seagrass. Seagrass can capture sediment, 

but lots of dumping diminishes 

water quality and clarity, cutting off 

light needed for photosynthesis. The 

limited availability of alternative protein 

sources to seagrass fauna necessitated 

finding solutions to these problems, 

The loss of both forest cover and 

coastal mangroves also affected water 

retention on the island, planting trees 

was thus a double winner. Following 

discussions with residents and a mapping 

exercise carried out by Forkani, 

the best sites to plant trees were identified. 

Over time, it was hoped the trees 

would limit sedimentation, rebuild 

water retention, protect seagrass 

and provide an additional source of 

income for farmers. To date, around 

4,500 trees have been planted along 

Kaledupa’s riverbanks, and Forkani 

are beginning to turn their sights to 

the other major threat facing seagrass 

ecosystems of the region—overfishing. 

Threats to seagrass are widespread 

and impacts are damaging to their 

productivity, but whether it is the 

management of river banks, restoration 

of adjacent mangroves or fisheries 

management, solutions are often 

simple and widely available. These 

simple solutions carried over larger 

scales have the potential to offer hope 

for the millions of people dependent 

upon seagrass resources. Continuing 

to highlight the importance of these 

systems and the threats they face is 

vital for their long-term viability. 

Dr Richard K.F Unsworth 

(r.k.f.unsworth@swansea.ac.uk) 

Lecturer in Marine Biology, University 

of Swansea. 

Dr Leanne C. Cullen-Unsworth 

(Cullen-UnsworthLC@cardiff.ac.uk), 

Research Fellow, Cardiff University. 

Figure 2. At low tide vast areas of seagrass meadows become exposed all around 

the world. With limited gear, many people collect a large proportion of their daily 

protein needs from the associated animal life. Image © R.K.F. Unsworth. 



Coming out in the wash 

Chloe Juyon reports on Imogen Napper's research 

focusing on synthetic fibres from clothes entering the 

environment. 

From the deepest point of our oceans to the skies, from 

the Antarctic to the arctic, from rivers to remote 

highlands, we are surrounded by microplastic. 

In 2016, in issue 7 of The Marine Biologist, Dr Pennie 

Lindeque reported on the ingestion of microplastic by 

zooplankton, demonstrating a route into the food chain. 

In the past few years, researchers have found traces 

of microplastics in fish, mussels, shrimp, salt, bottled 

water, tap water, honey, beer, and even in our gut. 

So, what are microplastics? They are plastic particles or 

fibres smaller than 5 mm found in the environment. They 

include: particles originating from degradation of larger 

plastic items; manufactured microscopic particles like those 

used in various cosmetic products; and synthetic fibres 

from our clothes that are released in washing machine 

waste water. Microplastics have become a global challenge 

due to the threats they pose to biota and public health. 

In 2015, Imogen Napper, Research Fellow in the 

International Marine Litter Research Unit at the University 

of Plymouth, turned her attention to cosmetic 

products. She identified that one single shower could 

send 100,000 microbeads down our drains, representing 

a possible major source of microfibre contamination in 

the marine environment. Her findings helped implement 

a ban on the sale of cosmetic and personal care products 

containing microplastics in the UK as of June 2018. 

The following year, Imogen looked at another possible 

important source of microplastics in the marine environment: 

synthetic fibres from our clothes. You might have 

noticed little balls of ‘fluff’ on the surface of garments, 

especially synthetic jumpers. These are referred to as pills. 

In the washing cycle, pilling occurs due to entanglement, 

friction or wear of the fabric. Some of these fibres travel 

through waste water to our sewage treatment plants. After 

going through various screenings and treatments, the water 

returns to rivers and the sea. The problem is that some of 

these fibres are small enough to pass through the screens 

and end up in the environment. The dark side to this 

story is that these fibres do not decompose or disintegrate 

and become vehicles for toxic chemicals and pathogens. 

Imogen analysed various different fabrics from polyester, 

polyester and cotton blend, and acrylic garments and put 

each through various wash cycles at different temperatures, 

also varying the use of detergent. She found that acrylicbased 

garments were the worst, releasing on average about 

700,000 fibres per wash. She said, ‘This is something we 

do in our everyday life once a day or once every two days. 

Imagine that every time you wash; then your street, then 

your town, then a city, then the country: it's a substantial 

amount of fibres that are coming out of our clothes.’ 

What can we do? The best way to tackle any pollution 

issue is to prevent the pollutant entering waterways and 

oceans at the source. Imogen also found that cottonpolyester 

blend shed the fewest fibres. Does this mean we 

should all forget about our acrylic jumpers and only buy 

cotton blend garments? This would probably be unrealistic, 

and is why Imogen is currently testing various microfibre 

‘filters’ to find the best way to prevent the release of 

microfibres from washing machines. She will be able to 

share her results later this year, helping us to decide which 

filter to choose. In the meantime, the advice to reduce the 

amount of fibre being released from your own washing 

machine is to choose short cycles and low temperature, 

use liquid bio detergent and always run a full load 1 . 

Chloe Juyon (chloejuyon@yahoo.co.nz) 

0.5 mm 

Microfibres obtained from washing clothes. Image © Imogen Napper. 


https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/research/marine-litter 

That laboratory equipment looks familiar… Imogen Napper and the 

washing machines used in her research. Image © Imogen Napper. 

1 Advice from a 2017 report by the MERMAIDS Consortium, Plastic 

Soup Foundation, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (IPCB and ISMAC), 

Polysistec, Leitat Technological Center, and Ocean Clean Wash. 



Bioprospecting for algal riches 

Valeria Villanova describes the search for 

commercially promising microalgae, made possible 

through an EU transnational access agreement. 

Microalgae are unicellular photosynthetic 

microorganisms that are attracting interest because 

of their high potential for biotechnological 

applications. Owing to their high content of highvalue 

molecules (e.g. proteins, polyunsaturated fatty 

acid, pigments, etc.) they are potential sources of food 

supplements for humans and animals, products for 

the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries, or viable 

alternatives to vegetable oils. Despite their great industrial 

potential and their abundant presence in nature, very few 

species are commercially exploited. This is mainly due to 

high costs of cultivation, collection and extraction. The 

characterization of the different microalgae species present 

in nature and the identification of optimal conditions 

for their development and growth are necessary to bring 

down the cost of production on an industrial scale. 

Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean and one 

of the 20 Italian regions, benefits from the high biodiversity 

of the Mediterranean Sea and high solar irradiation 

throughout the year, making it an ideal location to explore 

the economic development of microalgae. The aim of 

my research at the Department of Chemical Engineering, 

University of Palermo, is to isolate new microalgae 

species from various sites in Sicily, and to identify one 

or more species suitable for commercial exploitation. 

One of our most interesting sampling sites was the 

natural reserve ‘Saline di Trapani e Paceco’, formed by 

several sea salt pans in the province of Trapani, on the 

west coast of Sicily (Fig. 1). During the summer, some of 

these salt pans change colour from white to pink-red due 

to the proliferation of hypersaline organisms. We have 

Box 1. The European Marine Biological Research 

Infrastructure Cluster (EMBRIC) 

No single institution has the diversity of facilities and 

expertise needed for advanced bioprospecting. The 

support of the European Marine Biological Research 

Infrastructure Cluster (EMBRIC) was therefore crucial to 

enable this research. 

The genotyping of Dunaliella strains was done at the 

Marine Biological Association, taking advantage of the 

expertise and experience of Dr Andrea Highfield. The 

metabolomics analysis was carried out in Mark Brönstrup's 

lab at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection 

Research (HZI), in Germany, using the UHPLC-ESI- 

QTOF-MS 1 platform. 

Find out more about the EMBRIC transnational access 

program: www.embric.eu/access/TA 

1 Ultra High Performance Liquid Chromatography coupled with 

ElectroSpray Ionisation Quadrupole Time-Of-Flight Mass Spectrometry. 

Figure 1. New strains of microorganisms from different pink and red 

pans were isolated from this natural reserve through serial dilution 

methods. The identification of isolated bacteria and microalgae to 

species level was carried out by amplification of molecular markers 

through PCR. 

Figure 2. Microrganisms isolated from the different salt pans: 

Cyanothece cf (a), Dunaliella viridis (b), D. salina (c). 

isolated various ‘extremophile’ microalgal strains from this 

location (Fig. 2) and characterized them at the molecular 

level. This enables us to select those strains that have 

promising industrial characteristics such as resistance to 

high temperatures, high productivity in extremely strong 

sunlight, and production of carotenoids (red pigments). 

Amongst this group, the species Dunaliella salina is a 

green unicellular alga that fulfils these criteria, producing 

very high concentrations of β-carotene (up to 14%) and 

assuming a red colour. β-carotene is a carotenoid with 

antioxidant action, useful as a natural defence against the 

ageing process and in cellular changes induced by free 

radicals. It is also used as a natural dye, a food additive for 

humans and animals, and in cosmetics. For this reason, 

identifying new Dunaliella strains with great industrial 

potential is a high priority for my project and thanks to the 

EMBRIC Transnational Access programme it was possible 

to compare the gene sequences and metabolic profile with 

already identified species of the genus (See Box 1). The 

next step of this work will be the exploitation of the best 

candidates of Dunaliella strains in aquaculture industries. 

Valeria Villanova (villanova.valeria@gmail.com) 

Acknowledgements 

This research received funding from the EU Horizon 2020 

research and innovation programme under grant agreement 

No 654008, EMBRIC project. 

I would like to thank the WWF (World Wide Fund for 

Nature) for permission to work in the study area. 



Easy access to the sea at a unique waterfront campus 

Marine biology students at the University of Southampton can get from class to boat in ten minutes. 

Cathy Lucas explains why this is such a special place to study marine biology. 

The University of Southampton, 

UK is a founding member of 

the Russell Group of universities 

with a strong focus on marine and 

maritime research and education. 

The oceans are increasingly on our 

screens and in the news, and correctly 

so, as our seas provide multi-dimensional 

support for life on Earth, but are 

under threat from human activities and 

global climate change. Recent articles 

have identified ‘grand challenges’ 

and ‘global research priorities’ for the 

oceans, including understanding the 

role of biodiversity in maintaining 

healthy marine ecosystem function, the 

relationships between human pressures 

and climate change on ecosystems, 

conservation and protection of our seas, 

and food security and resource management. 

Tackling these issues requires 

trained marine biologists to research, 

educate and communicate with fellow 

scientists, policy makers and the public. 

What does a 21st century marine 

biologist look like? They should have 

Figure 1. The University of Southampton’s Waterfront Campus at the National Oceanography Centre 

Southampton, UK, with the RRS James Cook moored alongside. 

the traditional skill sets of being able 

to carry out fieldwork, identify and 

quantify marine organisms, describe 

the habitats and their associated 

populations and communities, measure 

functional rates, and analyse datasets. 

In recent years, marine biological 

research has closed the gap with terrestrial 

and aquatic sciences with the use 

of autonomous vehicles, drones and 

robotics, advanced molecular techniques, 

and improved handling of large 

datasets. The nature of marine ecosystems 

means that the modern marine 

biologist needs to be multi-disciplinary 

in their outlook, through collaboration 

with conservation biologists, oceanographers, 

biogeochemists, atmospheric 

scientists, as well as with policy makers, 

social scientists and engineers. The 

School of Ocean and Earth Science 

at the University of Southampton 

provides the perfect environment for 

the modern marine biologist as it is 

one of the very few universities where 

marine biology is taught within a 

truly multi-disciplinary oceanographic 

and environmental science setting. 

Why study marine biology at Southampton? 

The city of Southampton has 

a long maritime heritage. It is centrally 

located on the south coast of England, 

situated at the head of Southampton 

Water, with London some 90 minutes 

away by road or rail. The local waters 

of Hampshire, Dorset and the Isle of 

Wight have one of the densest aggregations 

of Marine Protected Areas in 

the UK. The port of Southampton is 

one of the largest container 

ports in the UK, and Britain’s 

premier passenger cruise port 

since the early 1900s, taking 

advantage of the double high 

water tidal regime and shelter 

provided by the Isle of Wight. 

Based in the School of Ocean 

and Earth Science (SOES) at 

the University of Southampton’s 

Waterfront Campus at the 

National Oceanography Centre 

Southampton (NOCS) (Fig. 1), 

marine biology students have 

unparalleled access to expertise, 

cutting-edge technology and 

facilities (Fig. 2) at a worldleading 

centre for research and 

education. NOCS is home to 

the UK’s fleet of deep ocean 

research ships the RRS Discovery 

and RRS James Cook, as well 

as the UK’s most advanced 

remotely operated vehicle ISIS, and the 

UK’s fleet of autonomous underwater 

vehicles (AUVs) including the infamous 

Boaty McBoatface. The National Oceanographic 

Library, located in NOCS, is 

the largest Earth and marine science 

library in Europe, and library staff 

support students’ learning with study 

skills sessions and teaching resources. 

In the last Research Excellence 

Framework (REF2014) SOES was 

ranked as the leading marine science 

department in the UK and in the latest 



QS World Rankings by subject, Earth 

& Marine Science at Southampton 

was ranked 46th. SOES delivers 

undergraduate degree programmes in 

marine biology, oceanography, geology 

and geophysics, as well as a range of 

taught and research Masters degrees 

in oceanography, ocean science and 

marine environment and resources. 

Recently, it was ranked third in the 

Russell Group for student course 

satisfaction (The Guardian, 2019). 

The Graduate School of the National 

Oceanography Centre Southampton 

(GSNOCS) is a large, international 

and interdisciplinary centre with over 

200 students registered for PhDs in 

all areas of ocean and Earth sciences. 

Figure 2. Marine Biology students identifying 

marine invertebrates in the NOCS research 

aquarium. 

What do our Marine Biology 

degrees have to offer? Southampton 

offers several flexible 3-year BSc and 

4-year integrated Masters (MSci) 

degrees in marine biology. Our Marine 

Biology with Oceanography degree is 

aimed at those who see themselves as 

biologists but with an interest in working 

across subject boundaries in the 

marine environment. This multidisciplinary 

degree teaches you how marine 

plants and animals interact with their 

physical, chemical and sedimentological 

environment. The Marine Biology 

degree is a classic marine biology 

degree but framed within a multidisciplinary 

approach; marine biology 

students at Southampton expand their 

biology knowledge base while appreciating 

the physico-chemical nature 

of the marine environment. If you are 

unsure whether to study Biology or 

Marine Biology, the distinctive Biology 

and Marine Biology degree combines 

Figure 3. A CTD and water bottle rosette 

being deployed off the back deck of the RV 

Callista during a Biology and Marine Biology 

fieldtrip to Plymouth in summer 2018. 

Figure 4. A fourth year MSci Marine Biology 

student taking underwater photos during 

the tropical marine biology field trip to the 

Galapagos islands. 

modules from Biological Sciences and 

SOES and prepares graduates for work 

in positions where a blend of terrestrial 

and marine science is needed, such as 

coastal zone biology. All Oceanography 

and Marine Biology degrees at Southampton 

are accredited by the IMarEST. 

Students coming to Southampton 

thrive in a research-led teaching 

environment, and are taught by 

internationally-recognized researchers 

with expertise in deep sea ecology, coral 

reefs and climate change, aquaculture 

and shellfish immunology and disease, 

inshore fisheries, artificial reefs, marine 

biodiversity and evolution, invasive 

species, the traceability of marine species 

using stable isotopes, harmful algal 

blooms and biological oceanography, 

macroecology of the Americas, intertidal 

processes and ecosystem services, 

and plastics in the oceans. Marine Biology 

is a practical science and students 

studying at Southampton enjoy two 

hours in the laboratory or field for 

every one hour in lectures, acquiring 

essential practical skills. We operate 

three inshore research vessels, used both 

for fieldwork locally in Southampton 

Water and Solent estuarine systems and 

on residential fieldtrips to the English 

Channel (Fig. 3). Because the boats are 

moored alongside NOCS, students are 

able to go from the classroom or lab to 

boat in less than 10 minutes. Through 

their degree, students spend at least 40 

days doing fieldwork, either in the form 

of compulsory residential fieldtrips in 

the UK or Spain (Biology and Marine 

Biology), optional field trips to Bermuda 

and the Galapagos in the fourth 

year (Fig. 4) to study tropical marine 

biology, as well as regular boat practicals. 

There are always opportunities for 

students to gain work experience, either 

through volunteering in the research 

aquarium, shadowing PhD students, or 

helping out with summer fieldwork. 

SOES has strong links with 

stakeholders and employers and our 

graduates go to work for organizations 

such as the Research Councils 

UK, Environment Agency, CEFAS, 

Natural England, the Inshore Fisheries 

and Conservation Authorities, 

British and Irish Association of Zoos 

and Aquariums, and environmental 

consultancy companies. Some even set 

up their own companies in areas such 

as eco-tourism and wildlife photography. 

Approximately 15% of marine 

biology graduates go on to PhDs. Of 

course, many students move into other 

lines of work following university, and 

our broad training in oral and written 

communication, numeracy skills, teamwork 

and independent project work 

enables them to pursue their careers 

of choice and secure a bright future. 

Dr Cathy Lucas (cathy.lucas@noc. 

soton.ac.uk), Associate Professor 

in Marine Biology, University of 

Southampton. 



The International Temperate Reefs Symposium 

Jenna Ho Marris reviews this key symposium and 

looks at the challenges and opportunities facing 

temperate reefs. 

Think back to your last conference. Did you get a free 

pen? A T-shirt? Delegates at the 12th International 

Temperate Reefs Symposium (ITRS) opened their 

swag bag to a complimentary box of Marine Ecology 

Progress Series sticky plasters, and a neoprene beverage 

cooler. These are tools of the trade for those studying 

the treacherous rocky shore or harbour wall, Sabellaria 

reef or a slippery raft studded with barticles 1 . 

High above the 

city’s skyscrapers and 

frenetic harbour, 

backing onto a country 

park, the University 

of Hong Kong, Swire 

Institute of Marine 

Science hosted around 

200 temperate marine 

ecologists between 6 

and 11 January 2019. 

Temperate reefs, or, 

as is generally agreed, 

rather intemperate 

reefs, are ‘hard bottom 

marine ecosystems 

found in cool waters 

between the tropics 

and the poles (T. 

Wernberg). They can be natural, man-made, or biogenic. 

The Symposium began in 1989 in Melbourne, Australia, 

as a collegiate antidote to coral reef conferences. A search 

on fundingtheocean.org (February 2019) for ‘coral reef’ 

brings up 1,638 grants for USD 174.5 million, ‘temperate 

reef’ brings up 0 grants, ‘tropical’ brings up USD 78 

grants for USD 25.4 m, ‘temperate’ brings up 10 grants for 

USD 1.1 m, ‘kelp’ brings up 17 grants for USD 5.3 m. 

A toasty 22.4 degrees north, Hong Kong is technically 

(sub)tropical. With sea temperatures ranging from 18 to 

30°C, artificial structures, the Pearl River Delta, yet also 

25 per cent of marine species found in China in only 0.03 

per cent of its seas, and a trawl ban since 2015, it mixes 

multiple stressors with surprisingly resilient biodiversity. 

Like 70 per cent of Australians who live within 50 km of 

the A$10 bn Great Southern Reef but hardly realize it’s 

there, what do 68 m people in 13 cities, part of the newly 

connected Guangdong-Macau-Hong Kong Greater Bay 

Delegates at the 12th International Temperate Reefs Symposium, Hong Kong. 

Image © Swire Institute of Marine Science. 

1 Metal screw with rigid plastic sleeve, partially embedded in substrate, 

for aquaculture of Policipes barnacles. Teresa Cruz et al., Universidade de 

Evora, Portugal. 

Area, know about the temperate reefs on their doorstep? 

This year's symposium was full of ecological disturbances, 

bookended by Emma Johnston’s keynote on the great 

speeding up of change in temperate reefs, and David Schiel, 

in the closing presentation, reminding us about earthquakes 

and oil spills. Plenaries by Christopher Harley, Christopher 

McQuaid, and Lisandro Benedetti-Cecchi presented ways to 

rethink statistical analysis for complex species interactions, 

while Tony Underwood went further; reminding delegates 

to examine how they formulate hypotheses in the first place. 

Student prizewinners covered new tools for marine ecology, 

ranging from technical (high resolution remote sensing 

by Tim D’Urban- 

Jackson), to human 

(social science analysis 

of marine protected 

area stewardship by 

John Turnbull). All 

presentations benefited 

from Steve Hawkins' 

and Gee Chapman's 

considered questioning. 

The Marine 

Ecology Progress 

Series will publish a 

special series of the 

conference papers. 

And the future? 

The Convention on 

Biological Diversity, 

signed by over 190 

countries for the conservation and management of species, 

is being renegotiated for 2021–2050 on the theme 

of ‘Towards living in harmony with nature’, but what 

does that mean? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 

Change urgently recommends that we must stabilize 

carbon emissions so that global temperature change stays 

within 1.5 degrees above pre-industrialized levels, with 

the next 12 years crucial to put a brake on emissions. 

Temperate reefers, crack open the plasters and get a cold 

drink in hand; whether on national advisory committees, 

or the fieldwork frontline, there’s work to do … 

#ITRS 2021 will be hosted by the University of 

Tasmania, Hobart. 

Jenna Ho Marris (jenna@taitamtuk.org), Co-founder Tai 

Tam Tuk Foundation. 


Wernberg, T. (2016). Celebrating 25 years of temperate 

reef science Marine and Freshwater Research 67, i-viii http:// 

www.publish.csiro.au/MF/pdf/MFv67n1_ED 



Making a splash at 

the 2018 Young Marine 

Biologist's Summit 

Eliane Bastos reports on this popular, annual event 

that nurtures the next generation of marine biologists. 

Young Marine Biologist (YMB) is an MBA membership 

category for under-18s. In November, 60 young 

marine biologists had the opportunity to share 

their passion and enthusiasm for the marine environment 

and learn about opportunities in the field at the 

YMB Summit at Baden-Powell House, London. 

For many who attended, the highlight of the event was the 

contributions from the young marine biologists themselves. 

The programme featured a YMB Flash Talks session, with 

seven confident presentations from young people, an inspiring 

keynote from Kids Against Plastic, and several creative poster 

submissions. Subjects 

covered ranged 

from plankton 

to education to 

conservation, 

and there were prizes for the best talk, the best 

poster, and best marine biology joke! 

As well as providing an opportunity to practise key skills, 

the YMB Summit aims to showcase the field of marine 

biology to young people. To this end, the event programme 

also featured a Marine Conservation Heroes workshop, 

with inspiring practitioners sharing top tips and practical 

insights in science communication, citizen science, and 

setting up a marine conservation charity. Additionally, 

the Blue Careers keynote and 'question & answer' session 

challenged the audience to think outside of the box 

when making decisions regarding their future careers. 

An event such as this would not be possible without the 

kind support of all those involved. In particular, sponsorship 

the highlight of the event was 

the contributions from the young 

marine biologists themselves 

Participants at the YMB Summit 

2018. a) ‘Do Science Now’ workshop. 

b) ‘Set up a Marine Conservation 

Charity’ workshop. c) Networking with 

participating organizations. 

Image © Marine Biological 

Association. 

from Sea Changers, Pixalytics 

and individual donors enabled 

the special workshops and the 

provision of bursaries for the 

YMB Flash Talks. We would 

also like to thank Go Jute, 

the UK Hydrographic Office, 

Ocean Turtle Diving, the 

Marine Conservation Society, 

Eco Cuisine, Buglife, Karavan 

Life and Bio London for their 

support, and all the volunteers 

for their time and energy. 

The YMB Summit will 

continue to work towards the 

goal of nurturing the next 

generation of marine biologists. 

The date and location for the 

YMB Summit 2019 will be 

announced later in the year; 

in the meantime please do 

get in touch if you would like 

to be part of this journey. 

Eliane Bastos (elibas@mba.ac.uk), YMB and Student 

Membership Officer. 

a 

b 

c 

Participants at the 2nd YMB Summit, London, November 2018. 

Image © Marine Biological Association. 



And the winners are... 

MBA student bursary awardees report on how the grants have helped them develop their careers. 

The Micro2018 conference, 

Lanzarote, Canary Islands. 

had the privilege of attending the 

I Micro2018 conference which 

took place in Arrecife, Lanzarote 

from 19–23 November 2018. This 

conference takes place every two years 

and is dedicated to research on the fate 

and impact of microplastics, including 

knowledge, actions and solutions. 

Over the five days, I attended more 

than 100 presentations covering a wide 

range of topics relating to microplastics 

from all over the world. This included 

everything from research on the 

occurrence of microplastics in marine 

and freshwater environments and the 

effects of microplastic ingestion on 

organisms, to studies investigating 

public perceptions towards plastic 

pollution and microplastics reported in 

the media. Hundreds of posters were 

also on display throughout the week 

and I was able to present and discuss 

my MRes research project, network 

with researchers in the microplastics 

field and experience an international 

conference for the first time. There was 

a great representation from Plymouth 

including several researchers and PhD 

students from Plymouth University 

Christina Muller-Karanassos at Micro2018 in 

Lanzarote. Image © C. Muller-Karanassos. 

and Plymouth Marine Laboratory. 

One of the highlights of the 

conference was a very inspiring 

keynote speech from Professor 

Richard Thompson, also known as 

‘the godfather of microplastics’, who 

first defined the term ‘microplastics’ 

in 2004. He presented solutions for 

the microplastics problem, including 

the use of a more circular economy 

where products containing plastic 

are more carefully designed in order 

to last longer and where everything 

can eventually be recycled. Another 

highlight was being able to have 

lunch on the beach on sunny days, 

which was conveniently located 

right next to the conference venue. 

Attending this conference has 

inspired me to continue working in 

the field of microplastics/marine litter 

in my next job or through a PhD. 

I would like to thank the Marine 

Biological Association for providing 

me with a student member bursary 

which covered my flight to Lanzarote. 

Christina Muller-Karanassos (christina. 

muller-karanassos@postgrad.plymouth. 

ac.uk) 

The YOUMARES conference, 

Oldenburg, Germany. 

recently graduated from Plymouth 

I university studying Marine 

Biology and Coastal Ecology. For 

four days in September I attended 

the Young Marine Researchers 

(YOUMARES) conference. 

At the conference, I presented my 

third-year dissertation titled: ‘The 

Effect of Non-Native Kelp Species 

on Detrital Processing in the UK 

Strandline’. This subject area is currently 

being researched by Dan Smale 

and his team at the MBA, who are 

working on the differences between 

native Laminaria spp. and their 

warmer water congener. These differences 

may then be useful in unravelling 

potential ecosystem changes 

Dale Kingston presenting at the YOUMARES 

conference, Oldenburg, Germany. 

Image © Dale Kingston. 

along our coastline in the future. 

The conference spanned 18 different 

research topics, and included 

posters and workshops, and a plenary 

discussion which set the room off at 

quite a thought-provoking tangent. 

Being at a conference with so many 

young researchers was exciting, 

since, during the coffee breaks and 

lunches, we discussed all our questions 

and thoughts on the science being 

presented, as well as the current issues 

facing the world. It was very inspiring 

to be surrounded by so many others in 

the same metaphorical boat: conducting 

research, and disseminating it to 

those who will find it useful. I made 

some good friends over the duration 

of the conference and will keep in 

touch with them as time goes on. I 

hope that many more young researchers 

attend this conference, because it is 

comparatively cheap, there are opportunities 

to connect with researchers—many 

of whom are also at an 

early stage of their careers—and it is 

an opportunity to learn a great deal in 

a short space of time. It also provides 

guidance as to whether research 

really is the right path for them. 

I would like to thank the 

MBA for awarding me this travel 

grant, and hope that students 

who receive funding in the future 

have a thought-provoking experience 

wherever they go with it. 

Dale Kingston (dale.kingston@students. 

plymouth.ac.uk) 



Amelia presenting at the 15th Deep Sea 

Biology Symposium in Monterey Bay. Image 

© Amelia Bridges. 

The 15th Deep Sea Biology 

Symposium in Monterey Bay, 

California. 

was very grateful to receive a MBA 

I travel bursary in 2018 to allow me 

to attend this triennial event. It is an 

important date for deep-sea scientists 

from both academia and industry, 

covering a vast range of topics, from 

the increasing use of novel technology 

to explore the deep-sea, to seabed 

mining and seamount ecology. 

This was my first international 

conference and I was lucky enough to 

be given an oral presentation slot to talk 

about my research in the ‘Connectivity 

and Biogeography’ session. My 

talk, ‘Defining benthic assemblages of 

conservation interest (VMEs) in South 

Atlantic UK Overseas Territories’, 

described the distribution of vulnerable 

marine ecosystem (VME) habitat types 

around Ascension Island and Tristan 

da Cunha. This work is part of the 

data that will form the first chapter 

of my PhD. Although rather nervous 

beforehand, once I started talking, I 

was comfortable and very happy to 

be discussing my research with such a 

large crowd of like-minded scientists. 

Throughout the week-long 

conference, I met some prominent 

researchers whose work I have looked 

up to since beginning my career in 

deep-sea research. A number of the 

scientists I met sat on international 

working groups, coordinated by the 

Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative 

(DOSI). Thanks to their encouragement 

and willingness to help the 

next generation of researchers, I am 

now part of this international community, 

working towards a deeper 

understanding and the sustainable 

management of deep-sea resources. 

Although it proved to be a very long 

week (not to mention the jet lag!), 

I am incredibly glad that I had the 

opportunity to attend this conference 

with my research group, the Deep Sea 

Conservation Research Unit (Deep 

Sea CRU) from the University of 

Plymouth. After the positive response 

to my talk, I am even more enthused 

to get back to work and continue 

my research. If any other students 

are thinking of attending a specialist 

conference or workshop, I would really 

encourage them. It is daunting at first, 

but rewarding and worth it in the end! 

Amelia Bridges (amelia.bridges@plymouth. 

ac.uk) 

The 4th World Conference on 

Marine Biodiversity (WCMB), 

Montreal. 

was awarded a student travel bursary 

I by the MBA to attend and present 

at the 4th WCMB in Montreal, 

May 2018. The theme of this year’s 

conference was ‘Connecting With 

the Living Ocean’, with sessions 

ranging from big data tools in marine 

biodiversity, to ecological traits and 

ecosystem functioning and marine 

policy and stewardship, all with 

the aim of finding the best ways to 

combine knowledge to combat the 

cumulative threats currently facing 

the world’s oceans. Not all was your 

standard conference fare, however, 

with Dr Linwood Pendleton giving 

an amazing play in three parts for 

his opening plenary on 

‘Rethinking Marine 

Conservation Science’ 

with the help of piano 

(Robert Hodge) and 

poetry (Anna Zivian), and 

a contemporary dance 

on the plight of marine 

biodiversity loss closing the 

last conference session. 

For my part I got to 

share my work on global 

phytoplankton sensitivity 

to climate variability 

with world leaders in my field and 

make valuable connections for future 

collaborations. Another amazing 

opportunity came with the conference 

mentoring program. I was teamed 

with six international students/early 

career scientists to look in depth at 

integrative frameworks and holistic 

assessments for marine health, with a 

focus on progress made in indicator 

development, ocean connectivity and 

large-scale biogeography as we head 

towards the Aichi 2020 Biodiversity 

Targets. We had several workshops and 

panel discussions during the conference 

with all of the mentoring theme 

groups, and are now working on a 

perspectives paper of research priorities 

for the next ten years. I am extremely 

grateful to the MBA for this experience 

and look forward to future collaborations 

with other WCMB attendees. 

Emma John (eljohn1@sheffield.ac.uk) 

Delegates at the 4th World Conference on Marine 

Biodiversity (WCMB), Montreal, May 2018. Image © WCMB. 



Reviews 

Guide to the Manta & 

Devil Rays of the world 

Authors: Guy Stevens, Daniel 

Fernando, Marc Dando & 

Giuseppe Notarbartolo di 

Sciara 

ISBN: 978-0-9955-6739-9 

Format: Paperback 144 pp. 

Published by: Wild Nature 

Press 

Whether you are a novice, an 

expert in the field or a diver, this 

book is a definite must-have for 

your bookshelf (or dive bag). It 

is well thought out, detailed and 

hosts the most up-to-date 

research on manta and devil 

rays. It covers a wealth of 

information, from feeding to 

morphology and wound 

healing, as well as a species 

identification key. There is also 

a section called ‘Mobulids and 

people’, touching on conservation 

efforts and a code of 

conduct for swimming with 

mobulids. Furthermore, the 

writing is complimented by a 

mixture of striking illustrations 

by Marc Dando and photographs 

that help the reader 

identify the species and 

visualise the behaviours 

described in the book. 

Manta and devil rays belong 

to the group Myliobatiformes. 

Their light and flexible 

cartilaginous skeleton allows 

them to save energy as they 

swim through the water. Manta 

and devil rays did not evolve a 

swim bladder; instead, they 

have an enlarged and extra oily 

liver. Despite this, mobulids are 

still negatively buoyant and 

need to keep moving to stop 

from sinking. Mobulids can 

‘breach’ (leap clear of the 

water) causing a pressure wave 

when re-entering the water— 

which is thought to be a form 

of communication. This is but 

a fraction of the wealth of 

interesting information you can 

find in this book. 

In conclusion, this guide 

shows the passion the team 

have for this subject and even 

buying it helps towards manta 

and devil ray conservation, as 

the royalties go to the Manta 

Trust. Finally, the research and 

production of the book was 

supported by the Save Our 

Seas Foundation. 

Rachel Vallance-Graham 

(RGraham_97@hotmail.com) 

Marine Conservation 

People, Ideas and Action 

Author: Bob Earll 

ISBN: 978-1-7842-7176-3 


Published by: Pelagic 

Publishing 

Coming to marine nature 

conservation after many years 

on the ‘terrestrial side’ in a 

land-locked English county, I 

kept asking the question, ‘Why 

is marine conservation so far 

behind terrestrial?’ I wanted 

some answers and thought 

this book might be a good 

place to look. 

This book is a series of 

interviews with marine nature 

conservation practitioners who 

have worked in a variety of 

different contexts. There are 

also scene-setting sections and 

conclusions. The interviews 

cover a range of aspects of 

marine conservation from a 

variety of standpoints and in a 

wider context than ‘just’ the 

UK. They introduce the reader 

to a variety of experiences 

including the sort of successful 

action from foreign parts that 

we have so far failed to carry 

out on these shores. 

Frustrations and less-thanperfect 

successes are also 

discussed. The use of 

interviews breaks the text into 

recognizably different sections 

that could be usefully revisited 

by the reader, and the book 

contains some handy text 

figures and ‘timelines’ that 

illustrate the development of UK 

marine conservation legislation 

to date—something that the 

reviewer has always found 

baffling with its plethora of Bills, 

Acts, Reviews and varying 

designations often referred to 

by letters, for example, MCZs, 

MPAs, MNCR, and MSFD. 

Much of the progress made 

in the UK in recent years has 

been driven by impetus from 

Europe, so reading this book 

against a background of Brexit 

underlined for me the importance 

of continuing efforts 

towards assuring the sustainability 

of Britain’s ocean 

resources, whatever the form 

Brexit takes. 

A very useful and readable 

little book. 

Nick Owen (n.owen865@ 

btinternet.com) 

Shark Attacks 

Author: Blake Chapman 

ISBN: 978-1-4863-0735-7 


Published by: CSIRO 

Publishing 

Few events evoke a more 

emotive response than shark 

attacks, but often the information 

surrounding them and 

reports on them are erroneous 

and sensationalized. The aim of 

this book is to cut through such 

reports and present the reader 

with an honest, impartial and 

factual assessment of the 

subject, backed up with current 

scientific knowledge. The 

layout is logical, starting with a 

brief introduction, the first few 

chapters cover shark biology 

and a detailed breakdown of 

shark attacks with definitions of 

the various types. The next few 

chapters comprise the role of 

the media, human psychology 

and personal mitigation 

strategies including risk 

management. The following 

chapter covers relevant first aid 

and trauma medicine including 

first-hand accounts and advice 

from paramedics. The final 

chapters consist of humanwildlife 

conflict and management, 

regional shark attack 

mitigation measures and 

legislation relating to attack 

mitigation, followed by a very 

brief conclusion. 

The book discusses a 

number of controversial topics 

such as culls in an effective 

and respectful manner, bringing 

both sides of the argument to 

the table. The narrative is 

straightforward, usually 

concise, and is written in a 

scientific style, but what sets it 

apart from general scientific 

literature are the detailed 

first-hand accounts from attack 

survivors, first responders and 

friends of those affected. These 

accounts really add a human 

element to the science and 

statistics, highlighting areas 

that are quite often overlooked, 

such as the lack of mental 

support and rehabilitation 

available to survivors. There are 

a few well-placed photos and 

tables and whilst the inclusion 

of figures rather than in-text 

statistics would have been 

helpful, maybe improving flow 

in some instances, it doesn’t 

really detract from the points 

being made. 

Overall the book is a real 

success, Chapman presents a 

rational, real world and original 

take on explaining the irrational, 

almost subconscious fear 

attributed to shark attacks and 

does so in a positive and 

scientific manner. If you have an 

interest in sharks and humanshark 

conflict but not in the 

usual accompanying sensationalism, 

or if you can relate to 

those feelings of fear before 

getting into the water, then it’s 

absolutely a worthwhile read. 

Callum Henagulph 

(callumhenagulph@gmail.com) 



MBA academic publishing 

The MBA publishes scientific journals in support of its charitable aims. 

If you would like to publish original research or reviews in the MBA’s journals, 

please contact the editor: 

Journal of the Marine Biological Association: Professor Jane Lewis lewisjm@westminster.ac.uk 

Marine Biodiversity Records: Dr Nova Mieszkowska nova@mba.ac.uk

Issue 13 of The Marine Biologist 

The 

Marine 

Biologist 

The magazine of the 

marine biological community 

October 2019 

www.mba.ac.uk/marine-biologist

The Marine Biologist Issue 12

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