By Sara Elliott
Nigel Hussey’s shark research takes him around the world where he sees first-hand the critical nature of conservation work.
Now, as part of a massive international study looking at the movement of threatened, large marine animals, he says we can see the harsh reality of global marine conservation.
“The study shows we’re not protecting habitat for key functions for these species,” he says.
“We’re not protecting those areas at the moment, and we need to go back to the drawing board in terms of a potential global network of significant conservation areas.”
The MegaMove global scientific project, led by associate professor Ana Sequeira from Australian National University (ANU), shows where protection could be implemented specifically for the conservation of marine megafauna.
Hussey says Dr. Sequeira, the research director and founder of MegaMove, brought together this collaborative group of researchers to address specific questions of aquatic animal movement in global oceans relative to conservation agreements.
Current marine protection areas include only 8 per cent of the world’s total oceans, which the UN High Seas Treaty seeks to expand to 30 per cent.
In total, almost 400 scientists from more than 50 countries took part in the global UN-endorsed research project. The scientists have tracked more than 100 marine megafauna species, identifying the most critical locations in our global oceans for better marine conservation efforts.
“This was a monumental task that Ana and her lead team took on in terms of creating this global, collaborative group to synthesise and pull together data from most of the animals we track in our oceans which are threatened by fishing, shipping, warming temperatures and plastic pollution,” he says.
“This study generated the most comprehensive assessment of movement of our aquatic animals in our global oceans to date.”
Hussey contributed his lab’s telemetry data tracking East African tiger sharks as well as Galapagos and silky sharks from off the coast of Ascension Island.
“This was data collected by joint studies with the Ascension Island government’s conservation team and with the Zoological Society of London and CORDIO in Kenya –Coastal Ocean Research Development in the Indian Ocean,” he says.
“When we set out with our data we were asking very specific questions like the residency of Galapagos sharks around Ascension Island. But then Ana has taken that data and translated into the big global level questions.”
The collective data, which appeared in the latest issue of the journal Science, identified areas used by marine megafauna for important behaviours like foraging, resting, and migratory corridors.
“It is all based on electronic data, primarily satellite tag data which you use to observe and track animal movement patterns” says Hussey.
“Just thinking of the costs – each tag is approximately $3-5,000 per animal – plus the cost of the logistics to deploy them. The sheer volume of effort and work by international researchers that forms the basis of this paper is outstanding.”
He says this takes these data and its meaning to the next level.
“Not just my research, this takes all science to the next level to a much bigger scale,” he says.
“Often, we’re addressing questions on an individual species within a particular study location within an ocean. And now by working with Ana’s international team we’re able to integrate all that data to ask questions on how effective marine protected areas are in our global oceans.”