Jessica J. MeeuwigUniversity of Western Australia | UWA · School of Animal Biology and Oceans Institute
Jessica J. Meeuwig
PhD with Distinction
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206
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Introduction
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January 2010 - present
Publications
Publications (206)
Many seafood products marketed as “sustainable” are not. More exacting sustainability standards are needed to respond to a fast-changing world and support United Nations SDGs. Future fisheries must operate on principles that minimise impacts on marine life, adapt to climate change and allow regeneration of depleted biodiversity, while supporting an...
Animal body-size variation influences multiple processes in marine ecosystems, but habitat heterogeneity has prevented a comprehensive assessment of size across pelagic (midwater) and benthic (seabed) systems along anthropic gradients. In this work, we derive fish size indicators from 17,411 stereo baited-video deployments to test for differences b...
Knowledge of platform ecology is necessary to best inform decommissioning practice. Remotely operated vehicle (ROV) video is often collected during standard industry operations and may provide insight into the marine life associating with offshore platforms, however, the utility of this video for ecological assessments remains unclear. Archival ROV...
Harmful, capacity-enhancing subsidies distort fishing activities and lead to overfishing and perverse outcomes for food security and conservation. We investigated the provision and spatial distribution of fisheries subsidies in the Indian Ocean. Total fisheries subsidies in the Indian Ocean, estimated at USD 3.2 billion in 2018, were mostly harmful...
Colour change is used by a wide range of animals. It is used for intra‐ and interspecific communication and crypsis, and can occur on morphological and physiological levels. Bony fish employ rapid physiological colour change and display various types of patterns and colouration (colour phases) useful for aposematic and cryptic purposes. Using an ex...
Scalloped hammerhead sharks Sphyrna lewini are threatened throughout their distribution. The species forms aggregations, which can potentially increase its vulnerability to human impacts. Identification and characterization of aggregation sites are essential to inform management and conservation. We used drones to characterize the spatial and tempo...
The use of underwater video techniques has expanded rapidly in ecological studies and is particularly desirable in protected areas since the method does not impact the habitat or remove fish. The Mediterranean Sea is a biodiversity hotspot under high anthropogenic pressure and consequently, non-destructive and non-extractive techniques for fish mon...
Vertical space use informs the ecology and management of marine species, but studies of reef-associated sharks often focus on horizontal movements. We analysed the vertical movements of silvertip sharks Carcharhinus albimarginatus using pop-up archival tags deployed on 7 individuals in the Chagos Archipelago, central Indian Ocean. The sharks change...
The silky shark (Carcharhinus falciformis) has experienced a significant population decline associated with intense targeted and incidental fishing pressure. Large marine protected areas (MPAs) are increasingly advocated for the conservation of oceanic species like silky sharks, recognising that the benefits of MPAs to such species depend on a comp...
Comprehensive catch data are fundamental to support the sustainable management of large pelagic fisheries. However, catch data reported by the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) on behalf of its member countries currently under-represent the extent of these fisheries in the Indian Ocean. We reconstructed fisheries catches of large pelagic species...
Mutualistic and commensal interactions can have significant positive impacts on animal fitness and survival. However, behavioural interactions between pelagic animals living in offshore oceanic environments are little studied. Parasites can negatively effect the fitness of their hosts by draining resources and diverting energy from growth, reproduc...
Tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs) are responsible for conservation and sustainable management of transboundary tuna resources in Exclusive Economic Zones and Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ). The data collected and analyses performed by tuna RFMOs are one of the main sources of scientific information supporting the m...
The ecological role of subsea pipelines is an important factor in the consideration of decommissioning options. Several studies have assessed the marine communities associated with subsea pipelines on Australia’s North West Shelf (NWS), considering the influence of factors such as water depth, substrate type, pipeline diameter and pipeline position...
Scalloped hammerheads (Sphyrna lewini) occur in tropical to subtropical waters across all ocean basins and are globally assessed as Critically Endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. In Australia, scalloped hammerheads range from Sydney, New South Wales (34° S; 151° E), around northern Australia, down to Geographe Bay,...
The decommissioning of offshore oil and gas platforms typically involves removing some or all of the associated infrastructure and the consequent destruction of the associated marine ecosystem that has developed over decades. There is increasing evidence of the important ecological role played by offshore platforms. Concepts such as novel ecosystem...
The pelagic ecosystem is the ocean's largest by volume and of major importance for food provision and carbon cycling. The high fish species diversity common in the tropics presents a major challenge for biomass estimation using fisheries acoustics, the traditional approach for evaluating mid-water bio-mass. Converting echo intensities to biomass de...
Most freshwater fisheries occur in developing countries, where freshwater fish underpin local food security and small-scale fisheries livelihoods. Comprehensive catch data are fundamental to support the sustainable management of freshwater fisheries. However, freshwater catch data reported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nati...
Bathymetric features such as islands and seamounts, as well as dynamic ocean features such as fronts often harbour rich marine communities. We deployed mid-water baited remote underwater video systems on three expeditions in Ascension Island’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), surveying the waters associated with six different bathymetric and dynamic...
Given the recent trend towards establishing very large marine protected areas (MPAs) and the high potential of these to contribute to global conservation targets, we review outcomes of the last decade of marine conservation research in the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), one of the largest MPAs in the world. The BIOT MPA consists of the atol...
Stereo baited remote underwater video systems (BRUVS) are widely used to document diversity, abundance, and biomass of marine wildlife and record unusual behaviours. We observed a cuttlefish appearing to mimic decapod morphology and locomotion during a non-targeted BRUVS study on Australia’s Northwest Shelf. While the pharaoh cuttlefish Sepia phara...
Spatial and temporal distribution of seabird transiting and foraging at sea is an important consideration for marine conservation planning. Using at‐sea observations of seabirds (n = 317), collected during the breeding season from 2012 to 2016, we built boosted regression tree (BRT) models to identify relationships between numerically dominant seab...
The conservation of marine biodiversity is firmly embedded in national and international policy frameworks. However, the difficulties associated with conducting broad-scale surveys of oceanic environments restrict the evidence base available for applied management in pelagic waters. For example, the Oceanic Shoals Australian Marine Park (AMP) was e...
Western Australia's Swan River is a complex asset providing environmental, recreational and commercial benefits. Agencies responsible for its management rely extensively on advice from experts, whose preferences may or may not align with those of the community. Using a choice experiment, we compared public and expert preferences for managing the ri...
Reef sharks may be ecologically redundant, such that other mesopredatory fishes compensate for their functions when they decline in number, preventing trophic cascades. Oral jaw gape, hereafter referred to as gape, determines maximum prey size in many piscivores and therefore affects the size structure of prey assemblages. Here, we examine whether...
Commercial fisheries catches by country are documented since 1950 by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Unfortunately, this does not hold for marine recreational catches, of which only few, if any, estimates are reported to FAO. We reconstructed preliminary estimates of likely marine recreational catches for 1950–2014, based on independen...
Many offshore oil and gas platforms around the globe are reaching their end-of-life and will require decommissioning in the next few decades. Knowledge on the ecology of offshore platforms and their ecological role within a regional context in Australia is limited and the subsequent consequences of decommissioning remain poorly understood. Remotely...
Here we describe the first underwater sighting of Shepherd’s beaked whale (Tasmacetus shepherdi). Two individuals were observed together on video footage obtained via mid-water stereo-Baited Remote Underwater Video Systems(BRUVS) deployed off the coast of Inaccessible Island, Tristan da Cunha, in the South Atlantic. This observation constitutes the...
Marine protected areas (MPAs) are an increasingly popular, but debated, management strategy to conserve marine biodiversity and ensure sustainable human use of the oceans. Economic studies can contribute to the debate about MPAs as a management option by evaluating their benefits and costs to society. In this paper, we outline how to evaluate the e...
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000366.].
Offshore oil and gas platforms are found on continental shelves throughout the world’s oceans. Over the course of their decades-long life-spans, these platforms become ecologically important artificial reefs, supporting a variety of marine life. When offshore platforms are no longer active they are decommissioned, which usually requires the removal...
Marine plastic pollution is a symptom of an inherently wasteful linear plastic economy, costing us more than US$ 2.2 trillion per year. Of the 6.3 billion tonnes of fossil fuel-derived plastic (FFP) waste produced to date, only 9% has been recycled; the rest being incinerated (12%) or dumped into the environment (79%). FFPs take centuries to degrad...
Within atolls, deep water channels exert significant control over local hydrodynamic conditions; which are important drivers of planktonic distributions. To examine planktonic responses to oceanography, this study tested the effect of proximity and exposure to deep oceanic flushing through these channels on water properties and planktonic assemblag...
Since the 1950s, industrial fisheries have expanded globally, as fishing vessels are required to travel further afield for fishing opportunities. Technological advancements and fishery subsidies have granted ever-increasing access to populations of sharks, tunas, billfishes, and other predators. Wilderness refuges, defined here as areas beyond the...
Here we outline the genesis of Seamap Australia, which integrates spatial data of the seabed of Australia’s continental shelf (0–200 m depth) from multiple sources to provide a single national map layer of marine habitat. It is underpinned by a hierarchical classification scheme with registered vocabulary, enabling presentation of nationally consis...
Reef sharks are vulnerable predators experiencing severe population declines mainly due to overexploitation. However, beyond direct exploitation, human activities can produce indirect or sublethal effects such as behavioral alterations. Such alterations are well known for terrestrial fauna but poorly documented for marine species. Using an extensiv...
Marine fisheries are in crisis, requiring twice the fishing effort of the 1950s to catch the same quantity of fish, and with many fleets operating beyond economic or ecological sustainability. A possible consequence of diminishing returns in this race to fish is serious labour abuses, including modern slavery, which exploit vulnerable workers to re...
Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) is the third largest maritime territory in the world. Monitoring its dynamics is fundamental to understanding and reporting on how the ocean is responding to human pressures and global environmental change. Increasingly stringent conservation budgets, however, are placing a strong emphasis on strategic reso...
Postwar growth of industrial fisheries catch to its peak in 1996 was driven by increasing fleet capacity and geographical expansion. An investigation of the latter, using spatially allocated reconstructed catch data to quantify “mean distance to fishing grounds,” found global trends to be dominated by the expansion histories of a small number of di...
Reliable abundance estimates for species are fundamental in ecology, fisheries, and conservation. Consequently, predictive models able to provide reliable estimates for un- or poorly-surveyed locations would prove a valuable tool for management. Based on commonly used environmental and physical predictors, we developed predictive models of total fi...
Summary of test results when including a model with a quadratic term for rugosity in the model set, i.e., Model 13 poly (rugosity,2), for NR predicting total fish abundance (Ntotal) and abundance by fish family to Ningaloo Reef
Shown are the two best performing models according to the weights of the Akaike Information Criteria corrected for small s...
Location of the sampling sites where fish data were collected in (A) Ningaloo Reef (adapted from Sequeira et al., 2016) and (B) the Great Barrier Reef
Ranges of predictor variables: (A) Sampled locations in Ningaloo Reef, and (B) All locations in Ningaloo Reef
Prediction of total fish abundance (Ntotal) and fish abundance by fish family to Ningaloo Reef by all the transferred models from the GreatBarrier Reef (i.e., by all scenarios)
Latitude degrees are shown in y-axis.
The longitude in the GBR spans 130 to 140 degrees. For maximum and minimum prediction values refer to Table 2
Data tables for the GBR and NR including all the predictors considered as well as the total abundances and abundances by fish family in each reef
With over 70 contributors from 30 agencies, the NESP Marine Biodiversity Hub has developed a suite of field manuals to describe a nationally consistent and defensible approach to marine data acquisition.
This manual relates to pelagic (mid-water) BRUVS, i.e. gear designed to acquire digital video imagery of macro-organisms living in the ocean’s w...
Cetaceans are some of the most iconic animals on the planet, yet few of the 45 species of whales, dolphins and porpoises known to occur in Australian waters have been extensively studied to date. Historical commercial whaling records and recent modelling studies suggest that the submarine canyons within and around the Bremer Marine Park provide fav...
Approximately 70 kilometres south-east of Bremer Bay (119.4°E, 34.4°S) off southern Western Australia’s coast lies a group of submarine canyons that incise the continental slope, plunging to depths of more than 1,000 metres. Charismatic pelagic organisms such as cetaceans, sharks, seabirds and squid are known to concentrate in high abundance above...
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....
Entrainment of growth patterns of multiple species to single climatic drivers can lower ecosystem resilience and increase the risk of species extinction during stressful climatic events. However, predictions of the effects of climate change on the productivity and dynamics of marine fishes are hampered by a lack of historical data on growth pattern...
Evidence from the wild as to the ecological and evolutionary consequences of top predator depletions remains limited, especially in marine systems. Given the pace and extent of predator loss, an understanding of these processes is important. Two sets of adjacent coral reef systems off north-western Australia have similar biological, physical and en...
Tuna, billfish, and oceanic sharks [hereafter referred to as 'mobile oceanic fishes and sharks' (MOFS)] are characterised by conservative life-history strategies and highly migratory behaviour across large, transnational ranges. Intense exploitation over the past 65 years by a rapidly expanding high-seas fishing fleet has left many populations depl...
Tiger sharks were sampled off the western (Ningaloo Reef, Shark Bay) and eastern (the Great Barrier Reef; GBR, Queensland and New South Wales; NSW) coastlines of Australia. Multiple tissues were collected from each shark to investigate the effects of location, size and sex of sharks on δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N stable isotopes among these locations. Isotopic c...
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0177374.].
Reef sharks are declining world‐wide under ever‐increasing fishing pressure, with potential consequences on ecosystem functioning. Marine protected areas ( MPA s) are currently one of the management tools used to counteract the pervasive impacts of fishing. However, MPA s in which reef sharks are abundant tend to be located in remote and underexplo...
Aim
Protected areas have become pivotal to the modern conservation planning toolbox, but a limited understanding of marine macroecology is hampering their efficient design and implementation in pelagic environments. We explored the respective contributions of environmental factors and human impacts in capturing the distribution of an assemblage of...
We investigated drivers of reef shark demography across a large and isolated marine protected area, the British Indian Ocean Territory Marine Reserve, using stereo baited remote underwater video systems. We modelled shark abundance against biotic and abiotic variables at 35 sites across the reserve and found that the biomass of low trophic order fi...
Sample level data for all variables used in analyses.
(XLSX)
Open source GIS data acknowledgment
(DOCX)
Comparison of generalised linear model results of log-transformed shark abundance (MaxN) in the BMR.
(DOCX)
Comparison of generalised linear model results of log-transformed grey reef shark abundance (MaxN) in the BMR.
(DOCX)
Partial response plot for generalised linear models of log-transformed total shark abundance (a-c) and grey reef shark abundance (d-f).
(TIFF)
Pairplots of dependent and independent variables for univariate modelling.
Lower panel gives Pearson’s correlation coefficient for each pair.
(TIFF)