Long-spined sea urchins — the 'single biggest threat' for reefs in eastern Tasmania — are arriving via an ocean current supercharged by climate change. So what can be done about it?
abc.net.au/news/long-spined-sea-urchins-threat-to-tasmania-reefs-kelp-forests/101918242Every year an ocean current supercharged by climate change brings a destructive, spiky species south from New South Wales to the rocky reefs of eastern Tasmania.
"The long-spined sea urchin population is exploding in Tasmania and has been since the early 1990s, reaching an estimated 20 million by 2017," Dr Ling said. "As the atmosphere warms it literally spins up the wind. This is physically forcing the current further and stronger down our coast," Professor Pecl said."So, the east coast gets a double whammy, it gets the underlying warming that most of the rest of the ocean gets, and it gets this change in current system."
For more than 14 years, Scott Ling and his colleague Craig Johnston have been donning wetsuits and plunging into Tasmanian waters – to understand the changing ecology of the reefs.Their aim is to see if lobsters — predators that dine on urchins among other things — could help keep the spiky creatures in check.
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