Trinity’s marine biologists discuss their work on World Oceans Day

Posted on: 08 June 2018

Today (Friday June 8th) is World Oceans Day, which is billed as a global day of ocean celebration and collaboration for a better future.

Healthy oceans are critical to our survival, because they: support the plankton that generate most of the oxygen we breathe; support a plethora of plants, fish and other creatures that help feed us; regulate our climate; help to clean the water we drink; provide a home to numerous organisms and an environment for minerals used in medicines; provide limitless inspiration; and inspire significant cultural development.

The world’s oceans and their inhabitants face many growing threats, including climate change and its many knock-on impacts, acidification, overfishing, and pollution. The latter concern has received a lot of focus recently, and close to home, too, with the amount of plastic littering our beaches and coastlines rising rapidly. Earlier this week, it was reported that the many thousands of seabirds that nest on the Skellig Islands off the coast of Co. Kerry have turned to plastics to build their nests as opposed to seaweeds, given the amount of it discarded in their environment.

Among Trinity’s researchers are a number of people whose work is aimed at learning about and boosting the environmental health of our oceans, and of the incredible biodiversity within them.

One such researcher is Dr Nicholas Payne, a marine biologist who joined Trinity’s School of Natural Sciences in 2018. One of the ongoing themes of his research is the quantification of ecotourism impacts on marine animals, which helps us develop and adopt the most sustainable practices for ecotourism industries.

Dr Payne said: “Ecotourism is a burgeoning industry worldwide and it is often championed as a sustainable way for people to interact with animals. Ocean ecosystems bear a broad range of animal ecotourism pursuits – from catch-and-release angling to whale watching and shark diving – but it is often unclear whether these activities have detrimental impacts on oceanic wildlife.”

Some of Dr Payne’s ongoing research projects seek to provide answers to some of these questions. These projects include:

• Using electronic tagging and physiological experiments to estimate how diving tourism influences the energy budgets of sharks. He has field sites in South Australia, Fiji, and the Great Barrier Reef, and is measuring ecotourism impacts on white sharks, bull sharks, and whitetip reef sharks. He collaborates with scientists from Flinders University, James Cook University and several other institutions to address this objective
• Measuring changes in swimming performance of tuna and sharks that have undergone catch-and-release angling, to develop best practices for ensuring the subsequent welfare of these angled fishes. For this project, he is collaborating with the Irish Marine Institute and Queen’s University Belfast, as well as shark biologists from around the world

Another Trinity researcher focused on our oceans is Dr Nessa O’Connor, a marine ecologist who joined the School of Natural Sciences in 2017.

Dr O’Connor leads several projects that examine the role of predators in changing environmental conditions; the effects of biodiversity loss; the impacts of the spread of invasive marine species; and habitat restoration. Her other projects include enhancing cultivation methods for the sustainable development of native species, such as mussels, seaweeds and oysters (the world is her oyster when it comes to marine research).

Dr O’Connor said: “Our oceans are affected by a multitude of human activities including fishing, pollution, nutrient addition and, of course, climate change. More recent threats include the presence of plastics and other pharmaceutical-based pollutants. Researchers at Trinity are working to understand how the combined effects of these activities are changing our marine ecosystems and how they function.”

“As an Island nation, we are also poised to tackle challenges including global food security, clean energy and human diseases by building on our ocean wealth – but these activities must be managed sustainably. We are working on several projects that aim to develop our natural marine resources (e.g. seaweed, seafood) under current and changing climatic conditions. For example, we are building a new aquarium (funded by the Marine Institute of Ireland) to test the impacts of rising ocean temperature and acidity, in addition to other stressors, on the functioning of common and fragile marine ecosystems.”