Williams et al. 2009: Australia's deep-water reserve network

Too little data

False homogeneity

Missed biota

We could do better

(Williams et al. 2009) is written by a group of CSIRO scientists based in Hobart, and focuses on the quality of the Commonwealth Marine Reserves network, particularly the South-East corner. The Commonwealth Marine Reserves network primarily used geographical features, such as whether a site was a sea mount or canyon, to allocate the reserves. (Williams et al. 2009) wanted to test whether the marine reserves defined by geographical features were also effectively representing biodiversity. Using camera footage and updated, higher-quality seabed maps, (Williams et al. 2009) found that the Commonwealth Marine Reserves network missed a number of smaller canyons and sea mounts, and missed a number of distinct marine communities.

But we can always do better

(Williams et al. 2009) point out that the marine reserves are being allocated under a tight timeline, with insufficient information. The risk of moving too fast is a reserve network that is ineffective but, because it is already in place, hard to move. The risk of moving too slowly is that some activities, like bottom trawling, can cause irreversible damage, and there may not be anything to protect if we wait too long.

On the balance, I would advocate for coming up with fast and crude reserve networks, then pushing for change once the data is gathered and it is clear what we should do instead.

Bibliography

Williams, Alan, Nicholas J. Bax, Rudy J. Kloser, Franziska Althaus, Bruce Barker, and Gordon Keith. 2009. “Australia’s Deep-Water Reserve Network: Implications of False Homogeneity for Classifying Abiotic Surrogates of Biodiversity.” ICES Journal of Marine Science 66 (1). Oxford Academic:214–24.