Christopher L. J. Frid

• Griffith University

Trebilco R., KR Sprogis, C Frid, and Fulton, E.A. 2024. Chapter 6.1 Environment in Ocean Wave Energy in Australia (H. Wolgamot, W. Ebeling, J. Orszaghova and A. Kurniawan). Blue Economy Cooperative Research Centre. Launceston, Tasmania, Australia. Pages 156-171. https://blueeconomycrc.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/BECRC_Wave-Energy-Report_A4_e2...

A multi-sectoral assessment of risks can support the management and investment decisions necessary for emerging blue economy industries to succeed. Traditional risk assessment methods will be challenged when applied to the complex socio-ecological systems that characterise offshore environments, and when data available to support management are lac...

Context Understanding how ecosystems function to deliver services is essential if we are to limit the impacts off human activities. Aim We hypothesised that increased densities of whelk, Pyrazus ebeninus, and crab, Macrophthalmus setosus, up to four times (given their large body-size and ecological roles, e.g. consuming deposits and disturbing sed...

Flow is a fundamental driver of ecological processes in river networks and estuaries. In estuaries, river flow interacts with tidal and wave energy to structure the physiochemical environment and the relative strength of these interactions changes in space and time. Thus, ecological processes in estuaries are best understood within the context of t...

Wet-dry tropical estuaries are extreme environments driven by wet season rainfall and runoff events. The biota associated with these systems are highly adapted to large fluctuations in salinity, but there are few examples globally where water extraction for human needs has not yet had a major impact on freshwater flow volumes and seasonal variabili...

Following an oil spill in the western Java Sea, in July 2019, the issue of oil pollution has received heightened interest. More and more people in Indonesia are increasingly aware that environmental damage will be a severe threat to the sustainability of ecosystems and environmental services. Given that oil pollution does endanger not only the aqua...

In this paper we describe work that progresses the understanding of socio-ecological systems from the perspective of exploring how the supply of ecosystem services might vary with changes in the state of ecosystem components. We developed and tested a new assessment approach (concept, framework and methodology) to assess the capacity of marine ecos...

A growing volume of evidence shows that the broad-scale biogeographic redistribution of species is occurring in response to increasing global temperatures. The present study documents poleward movements of up to eight species of nominally ‘tropical’ macroinvertebrates (molluscs, polychaetes, crustaceans and foraminifera) from intertidal mudflats on...

The world’s coastlines have become heavily modified over the last century, with the adjacent natural habitats declining in biodiversity and health under increasing pressure from urbanisation. In this study we assessed the structure and biological traits of macrofaunal assemblages from 24 south-east Queensland mudflats in order to determine whether...

Increasingly environmental management seeks to limit the impacts of human activities on ecosystems relative to some 'reference' condition, which is often the presumed pre-impacted state, however such information is limited. We explore how marine ecosystems in deep time (Late Jurassic) are characterised by AZTI's Marine Biotic Index (AMBI), and how...

Increasingly environmental management seeks to limit the impacts of human activities on ecosystems relative to some ‘reference’ condition, which is often the presumed pre-impacted state, however such information is limited. We explore how marine ecosystems in deep time (Late Jurassic) are characterised by AZTI's Marine Biotic Index (AMBI), and how...

Climate change and anthropogenic nutrient enrichment are driving rapid increases in ocean deoxygenation. These changes cause biodiversity loss and have severe consequences for marine ecosystem functioning and in turn the delivery of ecosystem services upon which humanity depends (e.g. fisheries). We seek to understand how such changes will impact s...

Mudflats - unvegetated, soft-sediment, intertidal habitats-support macrofaunal assemblages that contribute to a number of important ecosystem functions (e.g. food for fish and birds, nutrient and C-cycling). These habitats are widespread but are threatened by increasing pressure from anthropogenic activities. Greater knowledge of the consequences o...

Marine ecosystems support supply of ecosystem services (ESs) through processes and functions carried out by diverse biological elements. Managing sustainability of ES use requires linking services to the parts of ecosystems supplying them. We specified marine service providing units (SPUs) as plausible combinations of a biotic group (e.g., bacteria...

Australia has one of the world’s largest marine estates that includes many vulnerable habitats and a high biodiversity, with many endemic species crossing a wide latitudinal range. The marine estate is used by a variety of industries including fishing, oil & gas, and shipping, in addition to traditional, cultural, scientific and recreational uses....

As a society, we use more than 100,000 different industrial compounds to promote health and treat disease, to grow food and to access clean water. While technological developments have improved our lives, most of these compounds end up in our oceans where they threaten marine life and human health. The practice of ocean waste disposal has had a lon...

Predicting the ecological consequences of environmental change requires that we can identify the drivers of long-term ecological variation. Biological assemblages can exhibit abrupt deviations from temporal trends, potentially resulting in irreversible shifts in species composition over short periods of time. Such dynamics are hypothesised to occur...

Global warming during the Early Jurassic, and associated widespread ocean deoxygenation, was comparable in scale with the changes projected for the next century. This study quantifies the impact of severe global environmental change on the biological traits of marine communities that define the ecological roles and functions they deliver. We docume...

Biological assemblages are constantly undergoing change, with species being introduced, extirpated and experiencing shifts in their densities. Theory and experimentation suggest that the impacts of such change on ecosystem functioning should be predictable based on the biological traits of the species involved. However, interspecific interactions c...

The effect of detritus addition on nutrient levels in the absence of macroinfauna. Mean dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) concentration (with 95% confidence intervals) in microcosms containing no macroinfauna with and without the addition of detrital Ulva intestinalis. (TIF)

Linear model summary for the microcosm experiment analysis based on initial taxa densities. Effects of the densities of Corophium volutator and Hediste diversicolor on organic matter consumption (Ulva intestinalis consumed) and benthic-pelagic nutrient flux (ln-transformed dissolved inorganic nitrogen concentration) in laboratory microcosms based o...

Microcosm experiment data. (XLSX)

Field experiment data. (XLSX)

Linear model summary for the microcosm experiment analysis based on the mean of initial and final taxa densities. Effects of the densities of Corophium volutator and Hediste diversicolor on organic matter consumption (Ulva intestinalis consumed) and benthic-pelagic nutrient flux (ln-transformed dissolved inorganic nitrogen concentration) in laborat...

Understanding how biota affect the functioning of ecosystems is imperative if we are to predict the impacts of ongoing biodiversity change on ecosystem service provision. Evidence from marine sediments — the most widespread habitat on earth — suggests that ecological function delivery is driven by the presence and densities of certain species. Howe...

Predicting the ability of the biosphere to continue to deliver ecosystem services in the face of biodiversity loss and environmental change is a major challenge. The results of short-term and small-scale experimental studies are both equivocal and difficult to extrapolate from. In this study we use data on benthic palaeocommunities covering 4,000,0...

Fisheries products are an important source of food for a large proportion of the world's population and account for around 6% of the total protein supply (FAO, 2012; Figures 6.1 and 6.2). Fish (in this chapter the term fish is used inclusively to represent fish, shellfish and other aquatic animals used as foodstuffs) are significantly more importan...

Human society derives considerable benefit from marine ecosystems, as described in Chapters 1 and 2. It does so through a wide range of activities. In deriving these benefits humans exploit a range of ecological and environmental resources and services (Chapter 2). The majority of human uses of the marine environment have some measurable impact on...

Ecosystem services are emerging as a key driver of conservation policy and environmental management. Delivery of ecosystem services depends on the efficient functioning of ecosystems, which in turn depends on biodiversity and environmental conditions. Many marine ecosystems are extremely productive and highly valued, but they are increasingly threa...

Effective management and the maintenance of marine ecosystem services rely on a capacity to predict theecological consequences of environmental change and potential management interventions (Chapter 1). Making thesepredictions is difficult because anthropogenic stressors do not produce uniform or consistent impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem fun...

Using established associations between species traits (life history, morphological and behavioural characteristics) and key ecological functions, we applied biological traits analysis (BTA) to investigate the consequences of 40 years of change in two North Sea benthic communities. Ecological functioning (trait composition) was found to be statistic...

It is widely acknowledged that human activities are contributing to substantial biodiversity loss and that this threatens ecological processes underpinning human exploitation of ‘ecosystem services’ (defined by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment as ‘the benefits people obtain from ecosystems’). In the present study we consider three ‘intermediate...

Trawling is known to disturb benthic communities and habitats, which may in turn indirectly affect populations of commercial species that live in close association with the seabed. The degree of impact on both benthic communities and demersal species depends on the fishing effort level. This may vary over the year because of the fleet dynamics, whi...

Deoxygenation has profound effects on marine biota and delivery of ecological functions in benthic systems. Globally, coastal and oceanic hypoxia is rapidly increasing due to anthropogenic activities including climate change and eutrophication. Little is known about the response of marine ecosystems to deoxygenation over long timescales and the con...

In the Welsh part of the Irish Sea, a method was developed for assessing the sensitivity of different seabed habitats to existing fishing activities, across a range of potential fishing intensities. The resistance of 31 habitats and their associated biological assemblage to damage by 14 categories of fishing activity were assessed along with the ra...

Analysis of biological traits within assemblages is increasingly used as a proxy for ecological functioning. However, taxa often show plasticity in the expression of traits and can potentially change trait expression depending on local conditions. While many forms of disturbance will lead to changes in the species composition of the assemblage, sma...

Regime shifts are sudden changes in ecosystem structure that can be detected across several ecosystem components. The concept that regime shifts are common in marine ecosystems has gained popularity in recent years. Many studies have searched for the step-like changes in ecosystem state expected under a simple interpretation of this idea. However,...

Frid, C. L. J., and Paramor, O. A. L. 2012. Feeding the world: what role for fisheries? – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 69: 145–150. Fisheries (wild capture and aquaculture) deliver more than 110 million tonnes of food and around 15% of the dietary protein to the 7 billion people currently living on the planet. With the global population expected...

The European Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) requires European states to maintain their marine waters in ‘Good Environmental Status’. The MSFD includes 11 descriptors of “Good Environmental Status” (GES), including “Sea-floor Integrity”. This descriptor is defined as: “Sea-floor integrity is at a level that ensures that the structure and...

Global energy demand continues to grow and tidal and wave energy generation devices can provide a significant source of renewable energy. Technological developments in offshore engineering and the rising cost of traditional energy means that offshore energy resources will be economic in the next few years. While there is now a growing body of data...

The Terms of Reference for WGECO in 2011 were more diverse, and also more focused on responses to other groups within ICES than has been the case in some previous years. There was also a considerable overlap in scope between the ToR. As in previous years, there was considerable focus on the science needed to support the objectives of the Marine Str...

Long-term data on the North Sea ecosystem are available for phytoplanktonic, zooplanktonic, benthic, fish, and seabird communities. Temporal changes in these have been examined by numerous researchers over the course of the 20th century, their main objective being to determine how the interannual dynamics of these communities are controlled. Ultima...

Rice, J., C. Arvanitidis, A. Borja, C. Frid, J. Hiddink, J. Krause, P. Lorance, S. A. Ragnarsson, M. Skold, B. Trabucco, 2010. Marine Strategy Framework Directive – Task Group 6 Report Seafloor integrity. EUR 24334 EN – Joint Research Centre, Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities: 73 pp.

Background/Question/Methods It is widely accepted that global warming will lead to the destruction of habitats and ecosystems. For example, global warming is predicted to increase both the frequency and severity of cyclones, which damage coral reefs. Predicting the likely future impacts of such events on communities requires realistic stochastic m...

What can ecological science contribute to the sustainable management and conservation of the natural systems that underpin human well-being? Bridging the natural, physical and social sciences, this book shows how ecosystem ecology can inform the ecosystem services approach to environmental management. The authors recognise that ecosystems are rich...

What can ecological science contribute to the sustainable management and conservation of the natural systems that underpin human well-being? Bridging the natural, physical and social sciences, this book shows how ecosystem ecology can inform the ecosystem services approach to environmental management. The authors recognise that ecosystems are rich...

This paper presents an estimate of the benefits of the proposed designation of a network of marine conservation zones (MCZs) in English territorial and UK offshore waters. This ex ante analysis was undertaken as part of a cost-benefit evidence base to inform implementation of the proposed UK Marine and Coastal Access Bill. This Bill is part of an a...

Abstract A regime shift is a large, sudden, and long-lasting change in the dynamics of an ecosystem, affecting multiple trophic levels. There are a growing number of papers that report regime shifts in marine ecosystems. However, the evidence for regime shifts is equivocal, because the methods used to detect them are not yet well developed. We have...

What can ecological science contribute to the sustainable management and conservation of the natural systems that underpin human well-being? Bridging the natural, physical and social sciences, this book shows how ecosystem ecology can inform the ecosystem services approach to environmental management. The authors recognise that ecosystems are rich...

Half a million tonnes of sewage sludge was disposed annually over an 18-yr period at a licensed area off the Northumberland coast, UK. The disposal operation ceased in December 1998, providing the ecological opportunity to study macrobenthic changes in relation to theoretical succession models. A transect from the centre of the disposal site to a c...

Sedimentary marine systems are often highly productive and perform important nutrient regeneration functions as they efficiently decompose organic material. In recent years the role of habitat effects and of species composition in ecosystem functioning has become of interest. Estuarine environments are frequently subject to considerable anthropogen...

The cockle Cerastoderma edule L. occurs at commercially exploited densities within both species-poor and species-rich assemblages, dominating the faunal biomass and potentially acting as a key contributor to a number of ecological functions. The questions considered were: Is the delivery of ecological functions affected by the removal of C. edule?...

Aim: Investigate the potential for taxa to change the functional group to which they belong following some disturbance using feeding mode as the model trait and the raking of surface sediments as the model disturbance

Since 1972 the macro-benthic infauna at station M1, 10.5 km off the Northumberland coast (central western North Sea), have been sampled by grabbing each March and September. The data series now includes over 500 taxa from 327 genera. During the 1970s the system showed a regular alternation of high and low abundance years and this was interpreted as...

Since 1971 the macro-benthic infauna at Station P, 18.5 km off the Northumberland coast (central western North Sea), have been sampled by grabbing each January/February. The data series now includes over 260 taxa from 173 genera. The most abundant taxa are Heteromastus, Levinsinia and Priospio which between them account for nearly 45% of the indivi...

The spiny starfish, Marthasterias glacialis, is a common predator in the sub‐littoral of Atlantic coasts. While it is often described as an ‘important’ predator quantitative data on the composition of its diet and its foraging behaviour are lacking. This study used in situ recording by SCUBA divers to elucidate the composition of the diet, and the...

The organisms living on and in the sea floor, the benthos, represent an important ecological group. Although some (shellfish) have an economic value, most do not, and so little long-term data are available. We have identified three sources of historic benthic data for the North Sea, a regional sea that has been subjected to multiple human impacts f...

Marine protected areas are generally designed and managed on the basis of the presence and extent of specific habitat types or the habitats of important species. However, it has become clear that in addition to including these ‘structural’ elements of marine systems, management strategies should incorporate a consideration of the functional aspects...

Implementing ecosystem-based management requires methods of assessing the quality of habitats to deliver the high-level objective of achieving healthy ecosystems. 'Habitat' has been interpreted in different ways and this has confused the debate over which attributes constitute 'quality'. Three definitions of quality for habitats are advanced: 'spec...

Wiafe, G., Yaqub, H. B., Mensah, M. A., and Frid, C. L. J. 2008. Impact of climate change on long-term zooplankton biomass in the upwelling region of the Gulf of Guinea. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 65: 318–324. We investigated long-term changes in coastal zooplankton in the upwelling region in the Gulf of Guinea, 1969–1992, in relation to cli...

A ballast water short-time high temperature heat treatment technique was applied on board a car-carrier during a voyage from Egypt to Belgium. Ballast water from three tanks was subjected for a few seconds to temperatures ranging from 55 degrees C to 80 degrees C. The water was heated using the vessel's heat exchanger steam and a second heat exchan...

Implementing ecosystem-based management requires methods of assessing the quality of habitats to deliver the high-level objective of achieving healthy ecosystems. ‘Habitat’ has been interpreted in different ways and this has confused the debate over which attributes constitute ‘quality’. Three definitions of quality for habitats are advanced: ‘spec...

Marine protected areas are generally designed and managed on the basis of the presence and extent of specific habitat types or the habitats of important species. However, it has become clear that in addition to including these ‘structural’ elements of marine systems, management strategies should incorporate a consideration of the functional aspects...

A ship board trial of a deoxygenation method for treating ballast water was carried out during a voyage from Southampton (United Kingdom) to Manzanillo (Panama). A nutrient solution added to two ballast tanks encouraged bacterial growth, resulting in a gradual change to an anoxic environment. Samples were taken from two treated tanks and two untrea...

The phenomenon of discarding was studied using a multidisciplinary approach to allow the integration of biological, social and economic data. The research aimed to evaluate the strength of the case to reduce discarding in a single case study fishery, the English Nephrops fishery; to identify specific objectives for discard reduction; to identify fa...

Biological traits analysis (BTA) is a method recently proposed for describing ecological functioning of marine benthic assemblages. It incorporates information on species’ distributions and the biological characteristics they exhibit, to produce a summary of the biological trait composition of assemblages. The approach provides a link between speci...

In the North Atlantic, formal international agreements to provide a co-ordinated been in place for over 100 years. In this chapter, I consider how marine science has been used during that period, and the extent to which failures in fisheries management result from deficiencies or misuse of the science. My analysis of our failures in the past leads...

There are few accounts in the literature of the marine fauna of European salt marshes. The marine invertebrate populations of a coastal salt marsh in eastern England were studied for two years. A total of 32 marine species were recorded. The community was composed of a subset of species from adjacent intertidal sand and mud flats, along with a brac...

Marine Ecology: Processes, Systems and ImpactsBY MICHAEL J. KAISER, MARTIN J. ATTRILL, SIMON JENNINGS, DAVID N. THOMAS, DAVID K.A. BARNES, ANDREW S. BRIERLEY, NICHOLAS V.C. POLUNIN, DAVID G. RAFFAELLI AND PETER J. LE B. WILLIAMS xxi + 557 pp., 24.5 × 18.9 × 2.3 cm, ISBN 0 19 924975 X paperback, GB£ 27.99, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005 -...

Discards refer to that part of the catch which is returned to the sea during commercial fishing operations. Organisms that do not survive the discarding process can provide an additional food source to scavenging species. The aim of this study was to determine whether the quantity and quality of discarded material from the intensively fished Englis...

Recent years have seen a plethora of studies reporting that ‘regime shifts’ have occurred in the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans during the last century. In many cases, the criteria used to distinguish a regime shift have not been explicitly stated. In other cases, a formal definition has been proposed and the data set assessed against it. Develo...

The effects of variability in environmental conditions on species composition in benthic ecosystems are well established, but relatively little is known about how environmental variability relates to ecosystem functioning. Benthic invertebrate assemblages are heavily involved in the maintenance of ecological processes and investigation of the biolo...

Fisheries management in the NE Atlantic has recently adopted a precautionary approach to setting catch limits. This has been accompanied by the development of more complex and multi-species modelling tools for predicting stock size and structure. The scientific community are now being asked to provide an ‘ecosystem-based approach’ to fisheries mana...