Some of this year's highlights include:
- 14 Thousandth Survey: This financial year, the 14 thousandth RLS survey was added to the database, representing over 70,000 hours of volunteered time, not to mention the thousands of hours spent behind-the-scenes that went in making these surveys happen. A terrific achievement and a testament to the hard working RLS volunteers.
- Community Talks: As part of the 2020/21 Lap of Australia, RLS presented a series of community talks across the country to discuss trends in key ecological metrics at Reef Life Survey’s core monitoring locations. All up, eleven community talks were presented at long-term monitoring locations, including Lord Howe Island, Jervis Bay, Port Stephens, Norfolk Island, Sydney, Stradbroke Island and Rottnest Island.
- Launch of the REEF LIFE EXPLORER: After over a year of research, design and development in collaboration with social impact studio Glider Global, the REEF LIFE EXPLORER launched on the RLS website in December 2020. A unique interactive online resource, the RLE provides an opportunity for marine managers, scientists and the public to explore changes in tropical and temperate reefs worldwide.
Key publications:
- Reef communities show predictable undulations in linear abundance size spectra from copepods to sharks. Heather et al., 2021. Ecology Letters, 1-9.
- Assessing social-ecological vulnerability of coastal systems to fishing & tourism. Lazzari et al., 2021. Science of the Total Environment, 784.
- Maximising regional biodiversity requires a mosaic of protection levels. Loiseau et al., 2021. PLoS Biology, 19: 1-12.
- Trait similarity in reef fish faunas across the World’s oceans. McLean et al., 2021. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119: 1-10.
- Fish heating tolerance scales similarly across individual physiology and populations. Payne et al., 2021. Communication Biology, 4: 1-5.
- Evaluating the social & ecological effectiveness of partially protected marine areas. Turnbull et al., 2021. Conservation Biology, 35: 921-932.
- Conceptualising sustainability through environmental stewardship and virtuous cycles - a new empirically-grounded model. Turnbull et al., 2021. Sustainability Science, 16: 1475-1487.
- Direct and indirect effects of heatwaves on a coral reef fishery. Brown et al., 2020. Global Change Biology, 27: 1214-1225.
- Reef Life Survey: Establishing the ecological basis for conservation of shallow marine life. Edgar et al., 2020. Biological Conservation, 252: 1-14.
- Production of mobile invertebrate communities on shallow reefs from temperate to tropical seas. Fraser et al., 2020. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 287: 1941.
- Globally consistent reef size spectra integrating fishes and invertebrates. Heather et al., 2020. Ecology Letters, 4: 809-814.
- Latitudinal patterns in trophic structure of temperate reef-associated fishes and predicted consequences of climate change. Holland et al., 2020. Fish & Fisheries: 1-17.
- Delineating reef fish trophic guilds with global gut content data synthesis and phylogeny. Parravicini et al., 2020. PLoS Biology, 18: 12.
- Conservation challenges for the most threatened family of marine bony fishes (Handfishes: Brachionichthyidae). Stuart-Smith et al., 2020. Biological Conservation, 252: 8.
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