In December 2009, Dr. Scott Ling (former QMS student) and Prof. Craig Johnson published a research explaining that only the largest Tasmanian rock lobsters can constrain the invasive northern sea urchins.
The northern sea urchins are turning parts of the Tasmanian eastcoast marine ecosystem into urchin barrens. The urchins’ only predator is the reef lobster. But the reef lobsters are over-fished and are not enough to balance the number of urchins. The objective was to locate 900 large lobsters (>2 kgs) on a site to study their impact on the northern urchin population.
(see: abstract available here)
What do the marine biology scientists do when they leave their labs for fieldwork? Click on one of the images and follow the explanations.
Anaïs van Ditzhuyzen
Click on the images below to begin the slideshow.
