Some of this year's highlights include:
- 13th Consecutive Monitoring Surveys at Rottnest Island Completed: The spread of COVID-19 in early 2020 saw the world come to an almost complete standstill but the need to collect robust data and to continue monitoring the marine environment remained a high priority. Fortunately, an easing of restrictions in WA in early April provided a perfect opportunity for a team of [sociallydistanced] RLS divers to head out & complete the 13th consecutive year of monitoring at Rottnest Island.
- First Red Handfish (Thymichthys politus) population census undertakenby RLS divers: In association with the University of Tasmania & thanks to funding from The Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, a group of RLS volunteers spent 4 days in January 2020 conducting the first-ever full census of the only know Red Handfish (Thymicthys politus) populations in the world.
- 2019/20 saw 563 surveys completed from 236 sites by 54 divers.
Key publications:
- Reef Life Survey assessment of marine biodiversity in Geographe Bay. Stuart-Smith et al., 2020.
- Reef Life Survey Assessment of Coral Reef Biodiversity in the North-west Marine Parks Network, 2020 Edgar et al., 2020.
- Fish body sizes change with temperature but not all species shrink with warming. Audzijonyte et al., 2020.
- Meeting fisheries, ecosystem function, and biodiversity goals in a human-dominated world. Cinner et al., 2020.
- National-scale marine bioregions for the Southwest Pacific. Beger et al., 2020.
- Body size, reef area and temperature predict global reef-fish species richness across spatial scales. Barneche et al., 2019.
- Disentangling the response of fishes to recreational fishing over 30years within a fringing coral reef reserve network. Cresswell et al., 2019.
- Toward a coordinated global observing system for seagrass and marine macroalgae. Duffy et al., 2019.
Download 2020 Annual Report
