Aquatic Environment and Biodiversity Annual Review 2012

AEBAR 2012: Marine Biodiversity
Zealand’s EEZ as well as south to the Ross Sea. Four years the transectshave been collected, staff
have been trained in plankton ID work and over three years of samples analysed.
ZBD2010-42 Marine Environmental Monitoring Programme.
This project continues from ZBD2008-14. A starting point to the assessment and reporting of
broad-scale changes in New Zealand’s marine environment is to define basic criteria and locate all
existing and past time series of marine environmental data to improve awareness and access to
these data. After this, these data can be evaluated as to their fitness-for-purpose for contributing
towards a national Marine Environmental Monitoring Programme (MEMP). To date an online
catalogue has been designed and a portal to this is available at http:\geodata.govt.nz.
Questionnaires were developed to determine what marine environmental time series data were
available within New Zealand. Information to date gives us 131 databases, 50% of these are listed
as having ongoing funding (although not necessarily for all locations), and another 19% are listed
as likely to continue. Over 70% are publically available. Most cover more than one location,
although this is dependent on how the databases are constructed, e.g., DOC at present has a
separate database for each marine reserve, while regional councils tend to have separate databases
for different subjects (e.g., contaminant monitoring, ecological monitoring). Around 95estuaries
and harbours are being sampled, which is not surprising given that the majority of the information
comes from Regional Councils (Figure 1). There are 78 coastal locations and 33 marine reserves.
The second phase, determining fitness-for-purpose, was begun at a workshop held at NIWA on
11th June (see objective 3). Priority variables for inclusion in a national monitoring programme
have been identified from responses to a questionnaire sent to scientific experts and central and
regional government departments involved in monitoring and/or reporting. Core reference sites
and major gaps in the spatial network are presently being determined and the requirements for
spatial and temporal sampling determined. The project is due to be completed by June 2013.
Other research relevant or specifically linked to the projects above, are listed in Table 11.6.
Table 11.6: Other research linked to biodiversity metrics and other indicators for monitoring change.
MPI ENV2006-15: Database and fishing indicator on seamount habitats (Rowden et al 2008)
BEN2009-02 (Tuck et al. 2010)
ENV2006-04: Fisheries indicators from trawl surveys (Tuck 2009)
DEE2010-05
MBIE Core funding for Coasts and Oceans Centre
DOC Conservancy projects-Hawke’s Bay;
OTHER Regional Councils, Universities
EMERGING ISSUES
Monitoring coastal waters and New Zealand’s oceans to report on a national scale remains a major gap
There is little longterm commitment to direct monitoring the marine environment
11.3.7. Scientific Objective 7. Identifying threats and impacts to
biodiversity and ecosystem functioning
Many marine ecosystems in New Zealand have been modified in some way through the harvesting of
marine biota, the selective reduction of certain species and size/age classes, modification of food
webs, including the detrital components and habitat destruction. Benthic communities including
seamount communities, volcanic vent communities, bryozoans, corals, hydroids and sponges are
vulnerable to human disturbance. The mechanical disturbance of marine habitats that occurs with
some activities such as trawling, dredging, dumping, and oil, gas and mineral exploration and
extraction; can substantially change the structure and composition of benthic communities. The
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