Our next speaker today is Dr Aleks Terauds who's going to
talk to you about science in the Southern Ocean.
So Aleks is actually a spatial ecologist and he has been leader of our Southern
Ocean ecosystems program for a number of years now and that's what he's going to
present on today but it just as of Monday he was actually transferred sideways and is now
leading that really exciting integrated digital East Antarctica initiative,
at least the scoping of that work that I talked about this morning.
Aleks' research crosses species and biomes with a focus on science to inform decision making and
my experience of working alongside Aleks over the last 15 months is that he is absolutely
passionate about that science translation into policy and inter-decision making. So
for the next 15 minutes we're going to get an immersion in our marine science Program.
Thank you Nicole. It's a real pleasure to to be talking to you today.
Southern ocean science, the science we do in the Southern Ocean is one of the key pillars
of science in the Australian Antarctic program. We've already heard about how marine science can
inform what we understand about climate not just for Antarctica but for the rest of the world. And
this science also helps us to ensure that the resources and the environments and the species,
the biodiversity in the Southern Ocean are well managed and conserved for future generations.
When I first went south and I first ventured into the Southern Ocean in 1993,
nearly three decades ago, one of the things that struck me is we started to to pull things up from
the from the depths was the amazing biodiversity, not just what we were seeing under the water but
what we were seeing flying around on top, coming out as we were traveling in a ship.
And over the last 30 years it's continued to amaze me the incredible biodiversity,
which is somewhat captured in this schematic even though it does miss out the sea floor, which is a
really important part of of this environment which a number of people have pointed out rightly so.
The other thing that has struck me over my time was working in the sub-Antarctic the Antarctic
and the Southern Ocean is the inter-connectedness and this inter-connectedness is somewhat shown in
this diagram as well but it can't even start to capture the complexity of these interactions.
And I'm not just talking about interactions between the biodiversity interactions between
the various environments of these places and the biodiversity as well all come together to make
a pretty complex system. I can't do that system justice in 15 minutes but what I'll try to do is
to touch on a few of the key elements, mainly that we lead out of the Antarctic Division. I won't go
into the science in too much detail because we have some great snapshots in some details
but you'll see some overlap but hopefully a broader overview is the intention today.
When I'm asked about the 'why' of the Southern Ocean scientists,
why about the Southern Ocean science. I sort of start to hark back to that
very clear guidance or I start with the clear guidance that is provided to us in some really
I suppose high level overarching documents. The Australian Antarctic science strategic plan,
the Antarctic strategy and 20-year action plan and the Australian Antarctic Division's forward plan.
As I said there's some very clearly articulated, high-level guidance here.
As we come down we want some more specifics and and processes like the decadal planning process,
which Nicole is leading across our program are really important but so around interactions with
our policy makers. The iterative process of scientists talking to policy makers,
understanding what are the Contemporary issues of the day, that's another fantastic avenue
for us as scientists to understand where we should put our efforts.
And what do those efforts look like? Well if you start off on the left hand side of the schematic,
it's about gathering data. What do those inputs look like? We want to know how much krill is
out there. We're very keen on understanding how many fish there are and where are they?
What about eating the krill? How many of them are they? Where are those sea birds and whales
going? Why are they going there? What sort of environmental interactions are we seeing
between all these biodiversity elements of the system? Importantly what are the change
drivers? What effects do our fisheries have on the fish and the krill that they're catching?
And what are the implications of changing climates on these systems as well?
It's a complex mix. There's a whole bunch of inputs coming in here. And that's why the
Antarctic Division, while we manage many of these inputs through separate programs whether that be
the climate program, the Southern Ocean ecosystem program. Programs focusing on data acquisition
and synthesis, long-term monitoring. It's really important for us and across the Antarctic science
program that we start to integrate these. We look at them in their entirety wherever possible. We
start to analyze them together and that gives us the strongest and most insightful outputs.
And those outputs take a range of forms. They might be publication scientific articles.
The research might underpin submissions to a range of globally important International
forum. Whether that be the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources,
the IWC or ACAP. There's also a role for us to play in providing advice nationally and
interacting with our national policy makers. And Gin gave you some great
overviews of how that sort of pans out and what's important in the marine mammal space.
These outputs contribute to this vision of a well-managed
and sustainable fishery and conservation and protection of our Antarctic wildlife.
And what that actually looks like is a reduced impact of our human activities.
It's species and areas that are protected based on good evidence for the right reasons and it's
about CCAMLR conservation measures and catch limits being based on the best available science.
Rob did a fantastic job of highlighting just how important krill are and I just
wanted to speak a little bit to start with around our flagship project,
the sustainable management of Antarctic krill and the conservation of the krill-based
ecosystem. And I'll come back to this concept of the krill-based ecosystem a
number of times because as I said to start with, it's impossible to look at Krill in
isolation. We really need to understand its interactions with the rest of the ecosystem.
This flagship project provides us with a 10-year road map
for research into krill in the krill-based ecosystem over the next decade and again coming
back to the outcomes of a well-managed sustainable fisheries and conservation of Antarctic wildlife.
It's a big undertaking looking at the krill-based ecosystem and and we sort of think well where do
we start? Well the Nuyina is a great place to start and Nicole did a fantastic job followed
by Rob of really highlighting some of the capabilities. I think it's also really
important I'm not saying that they didn't but to re-emphasize the importance of the people,
the crew, the technical staff, the voyage support and the scientists that are crewing the Nuyina
and allowing this science to happen. And this is something that we've thought about a lot as
this amazing capability has come coming to bear is actually well how are we going to
make sure that we can use this capability? And I think making sure we've got the right
people and the right scientists has been a key part of our forward planning in this respect.
But what does it really look like? Well we take the Nuyina or other
vessels and we head south. We head to places where we know there are krill.
We don't do this in isolation. As I said before we have amazing array of capability on board to
understanding what's underneath the water but we also have observers that are working on on
the ship itself looking for some of these predators like whales and seabirds but as
we head south we look towards going to areas that we know are important from a krill point of view.
We have some incredible capability that allows us to inject sound, to push sound into the water
it reflects back and then provides us with some very clever and analytical techniques mind you,
to get a very important picture of what's under the water. And this is
krill and this is the Investigator and what we're seeing here, as Rob pointed out is at a snapshot,
more than a snapshot, a walk in the park as he said, I like that. An understanding
of what's underneath the water where the ship's traveling and by bringing these data back together
we can actually start to get a really detailed picture of what krill looked like. How many of
them they are, how much of them they are I should say how many is probably a little bit
beyond our reach at the moment. But how much of them there are. How is this changing over
time and what are the implications of these of these data for our fisheries?
And these data are also really important for our understanding of the predators that feed on krill.
We know as Gin said that a range of whale species travel between Antarctica and Australia on an
annual sort of basis. We know this because our researchers our teams have put satellite trackers
on whales. If we complement these broader scale movements, our understanding of these broader
scale movements with the observers that we have on board the Nuyina or other vessels,
we can actually get an understanding of what whales are in the vicinity of the krill that
we're seeing. And by doing that we can actually start to tease out what these interactions might
look like to the point where we can actually start to understand things like consumption rates and
the detailed interactions between these marine predators and the krill and krill themselves.
But as Gin pointed out, to study whales isn't easy and we are really starting now to look at more
innovate innovative ways and technological advances
to help us to study these creatures. Whether they be sonobuoys or drones,
this is in part, I think the future of some of our whale-based research.
Another really important set of predators in the krill-based ecosystem are seabirds. We'll hear
in a little while a talk from Barbara Weineke about emperor penguins. But our seabird teams
have been monitoring adelie penguins and a range of other seabirds for many years. In
fact they've led the way in the development of these autonomous cameras, an image of which you
can see in the top corner there, that allow us to have insights that we would never get into
how these penguins are moving to and from their colonies on a seasonal basis. And again using
satellite tracking techniques to understand where they're going when they're not on land.
All these elements come together to help us to understand and hopefully to manage
well and sustainably the krill-based ecosystem.
I'm going to shift a little bit sideways now though
and talk about one of the other really important elements of the Southern Ocean
and that's the tooth fish and the ice fish. And there are fisheries for these for these fish
in the Southern Ocean. Important fisheries for Australia and our teams are conducting
regular stock assessments to understand where these fish are, what their movements are,
how many of them there might be and in doing so help to formulate appropriate catch limits.
We work very closely with industry and government around this fishery to make sure that we can do
this. And it's not just about stock assessments we're really looking for as much information
as we can, again trying to take a bit more of a whole of ecosystem approach. What's the community
structure? What's happening with recruitment? What are their life? What's their life history? And in
a little while Jamie's going to talk to you about by-catch. Because by-catch is another element that
we're really interested in and wherever possible we must reduce it and mitigate the effects of it.
So I've spoken a little bit about all the data we can collect in the ocean but it's
also important to remember that there are other data sources. Satellites for example
can provide us with really insightful images at broad scales. Insights into the chlorophyll.
Insights into ocean height. The eddies that are occurring across the Southern Ocean.
And of course ocean temperature. And as Rob and and Nicole talked about, we can actually collect
live krill now through our capability in the Nuyina, bring it back to shore and we can actually
start to now undertake experiments that really do give us important insights into how these
fundamental keystone species might change under the impacts of climate change.
Where does it end? Why are we really doing this?
And I think for me it's about science that informs and drives decision making.
Both nationally and internationally our science is fundamental to some of this decision making.
And as a result our science underpins Australia's
leadership and influence in those International forums and at home.
Our science is changing the world.
We're ensuring that we have sustainable and well-managed fisheries.
That our management is evidence-based. We're conserving Antarctic wildlife
and we're clarifying climate change impacts. And so as a few people have said, the future is bright
but it's complicated and I think I want to come full circle now as I talk about the range of
data that we are collecting. Just to reiterate, satellite data, molecular data, shipboard data,
data from autonomous stations whether they be weather stations or autonomous cameras. And of
course we're conducting experiments at the ocean and Ice interface. And we have so much biological
data both from the marine environment and from the terrestrial environments. We have a lot of
data and much of this data is well targeted and collected in a very productive way with a
clear path to impact. But what we don't have and this is where I talked about coming full circle,
is necessarily a holistic and integrated framework for understanding what are the most important of
these variables to monitor? And it comes back to the question that Nathan asked us when he
was speaking just a few minutes ago. What should we be monitoring and why? And I think the East
Antarctic Monitoring Program will go a long way to answering some of these questions. And it won't
just answer them, it will actually in time develop the framework that can support future monitoring.
This monitoring is going to produce even more data and I think the integrated digital East Antarctic
initiative is a fantastic platform for bringing together stakeholders, scientists from across
the Antarctic community. And really starting to put together a package of acquisition data
processing, data management, data synthesis, analysis modeling and ending up with outputs that
are fit for purpose for a range of stakeholders, whether they be other scientists or policy makers.
So I think even though the future might be complicated, it still remains bright
and I'm looking forward to playing a part in that. And I'd like to thank you again for your
time today and when the opportunity arises I'm happy to answer any questions thank you.