Australia's Great Barrier Reef

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (the GBR) is an iconic natural ecosystem, globally renowned for its majesty and grandeur. The GBR encompasses a vast array of unique and important marine and terrestrial habitats, from deepwater reefs to archetypal barrier reefs, as well as vast seagrass and algal meadows, intertidal mud flats, sand cays, and continental islands. The variety of environments and habitats encompassed within the GBR gives rise to extraordinary biodiversity. The GBR is also unusual compared with most reef systems around the world because the islands and adjacent coastal areas are sparsely populated. Moreover, Australia is a developed economy and does not generally rely heavily on subsistence or artisanal extraction of reef resources. That said, the GBR is being increasingly threatened by anthropogenic activities, such as land clearing and agricultural runoff, coastal development, pollution, and above all, increasing global carbon emissions that are rapidly changing environmental conditions. Sustained and ongoing global climate change has culminated in unprecedented and recurrent mass coral bleaching in recent years, which now represents the foremost threat to the integrity, functioning, and biodiversity of coral reef environments. Significant investment and effort is committed to conserving the GBR, both to maintain the ecological function and human benefits derived from the various natural systems, but the effectiveness and longer-term benefit of established and renewed management actions are conditional on immediate and effective action to reduce global carbon emissions

Exploiting Marine Wildlife in Queensland: the Commercial Dugong and Marine Turtle Fisheries, 1847-1969

The historical exploitation of marine resources in Queensland has only been partially documented. In particular, the history of the commercial fishing of dugongs and marine turtles has received comparatively little scholarly attention. Since European settlement in Queensland, various human activities have exploited these\ud resources. We present documentary and oral history evidence of the scale of those industries. Based on extensive archival and oral history research, we argue that diverse fishing practices occurred and that the sustained exploitation of dugongs, green turtles, and hawksbill turtles led to observable declines in the numbers of these\ud animals – now species of conservation concern