![]() ![]() ![]() Two hundred years ago, more than 1500 kilometres of South Australian coastline was covered in oyster reefs teeming with fish and home to thousands of marine species. ![]() In fact, oyster reefs are often considered the temperate equivalent of coral reefs. The role of oysters as ecosystem engineers is not dissimilar to the role of trees on land or coral reefs in tropical seas. Their structures can reduce coastal erosion by attenuating wave energy and their shell building can provide a carbon sink, helping to slow the rate of climate change. Oysters also filter excess nutrients from the water which result from urban runoff, which helps avoid environmental catastrophes such as Algae blooms. Oysters have a phenomenal ability to improve local water quality and decrease water turbidity, which allows sunlight to penetrate to the seafloor to enhances seagrass growth. Restoring our lost oyster reefs can not only help the environment, but strengthen commercial and recreational fishing, and increase tourism for coastal communities. These reefs can increase the abundance and diversity marine organisms through the habitat they create. Oyster reefs fringed Australia’s shorelines and shaped our marine ecosystems for millennia. Combining both approaches provide us with key learnings that help forecast future marine habitats. Conversely, field studies benefit from interactions within a natural community, but spatial and temporal variation in climate parameters do not behave exactly the same as future ocean conditions. Lab studies can be carefully controlled, but the range of ecological interactions is quite limited. Our ongoing research uses combination of laboratory and field techniques. This increase will cause ocean acidification as more CO2 is dissolved into the world's oceans. Even if we maintain CO2 emissions at current levels - an unlikely scenario - CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will increase by over 50 per cent in coming years. One of our key concerns, is the rate of current change. We use projected estimates of climate change – such as ocean acidification and temperature - as modified by local management – i.e. ![]() Our scientists are at the forefront of research on the impact of climate change to our marine environments. ![]()
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