Johanna E. Johnson

James Cook University | JCU · College of Marine & Environmental Sciences

Climate change is considered to be a major environmental threat and there is a national priority to better establish the likely effects of climate change on Australia’s fisheries. Positive and negative impacts of climate change on marine fisheries are already being observed in tropical regions, including the GBR and Pacific. In the Torres Strait re...

The challenges that climate change poses for marine ecosystems are already manifesting in impacts at the species, population, and community levels in Australia, particularly in Tasmania and tropical northern Australia. Many species and habitats are already under threat as a result of human activities, and the additional pressure from climate change...

The four species of tuna that underpin oceanic fisheries in the tropical Pacific (skipjack, yellowfin, bigeye and albacore tuna) deliver great economic and social benefits to Pacific Island countries and territories (PICTs). Domestic tuna fleets and local fish processing operations contribute 3–20 % to gross domestic product in four PICTs and licen...

Pacific Island countries have an extraordinary dependence on fisheries and aquaculture. Maintaining the benefits from the sector is a difficult task, now made more complex by climate change. Here we report how changes to the atmosphere-ocean are likely to affect the food webs, habitats and stocks underpinning fisheries and aquaculture across the re...

The Arafura and Timor Seas region is shared by Indonesia, Timor Leste, Australia, and Papua New Guinea (PNG), and is at the intersection of the Pacific and Indian oceans. High coastal population densities, degraded habitats, overexploited fisheries, low profile coasts, shallow continental shelves and macro-tidal conditions mean that coastal and mar...

The Arafura and Timor Seas (ATS) region is shared by Indonesia, Timor Leste, Australia, and Papua New Guinea (PNG), and is at the intersection of the Pacific and Indian oceans. High coastal population densities, degraded habitats, overexploited fisheries, low profile coasts, shallow continental shelves and macro-tidal conditions mean that coastal a...

The concept of vulnerability has broadened from initial applications in the fields of risk and hazards, human ecology and resilience to include the management of social-ecological systems (SES). We review how this concept has been operationalized in various contexts and identify opportunities and challenges to apply vulnerability assessments to SES...

Marine ecosystems across the world's largest ocean – the Pacific Ocean – are being increasingly affected by stressors such as pollution, overfishing, ocean acidification, coastal development and warming events coupled with rising sea levels and increasing frequency of extreme weather. These anthropogenic-driven stressors, which operate cumulatively...

Synthesis report on most recent research on crown-of-thorns starfish, innovations on monitoring outbreaks and improving efficiency of management strategies, to control COTS outbreaks on the Great Barrier Reef

Coral reefs in the tropical Pacific region are exposed to a range of anthropogenic local pressures. Climate change is exacerbating local impacts, causing unprecedented declines in coral reef habitats and bringing negative socio-economic consequences to Pacific communities who depend heavily on coral reefs for food, income and livelihoods. Continued...

In the Pacific region, community engagement, participation and empowerment are key to effective and sustainable marine resource management at the local level. With the prevalence of a local marine tenure systems and the widespread decline of coastal resources, communities need to be part of the solution to facilitate recovery. A novel marine monito...

People, local cultures and the environments they live in are complex and dynamic social-ecological systems that have evolved together over time and are continually affected by a myriad of factors, including climate and global changes. Escalating climate and global changes present an imminent threat to Pacific communities, particularly for food secu...

Pollution in Coral Reefs

In the Pacific Island region, marine resources make vital contributions to food security, livelihoods and economic development. Climate change is expected to have profound effects on the status and distribution of coastal and oceanic habitats, the fish and invertebrates they support and, as a result, the communities and industries that depend on th...

Traditionally, small island communities around the world have had a strong association with their marine resources, depending on small-scale fisheries for food security, livelihoods, cultural practices and economic and rural development. This reliance on marine resources stems from having access to large ocean areas and therefore small islands are...

These proceedings present the outcome of the FishAdapt: the global conference on climate change adaptation for fisheries and aquaculture. The conference was organized by the FAO, supported through a Scientific Committee and hosted by the Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia-Pacific (NACA) in Bangkok from 8 to 10 August 2016. The conference was fi...

UNEP policy statement on wastewater and coral reefs

This report of 220 pages written by nearly 90 authors clearly presents the summation of an enormous amount of data and information on 19 of the 23 nations and states of the Pacific and outlines both the problems and stresses on these thousands of reefs, and the potential that these reefs will prove to be the reservoir of coral reefs for the world i...

In the Pacific Island region, anthropogenic-induced ocean warming is impacting coral reefs through thermal coral bleaching (Adjeroud et al., 2009; Cumming et al., 2000; Davies et al., 1997; Kleypas et al., 2015; Lovell et al., 2004; Mangubhai, 2016; Obura and Mangubhai, 2011; Rotmann, 2001) and by reducing coral calcification rates (high confidence...

In the Pacific Islands region, fisheries and aquaculture make vital contributions to economic development, government revenue, food security and livelihoods. Climate change is expected to have profound effects on the status and distribution of coastal and oceanic habitats, the fish and invertebrates they support and, as a result, the productivity o...

In several Pacific Island countries and territories (PICTs), rapid population growth and inadequate management of coastal fish habitats and stocks is causing a gap to emerge between the amount of fish recommended for good nutrition and sustainable harvests from coastal fisheries. The effects of ocean warming and acidification on coral reefs, and th...

A central claim of community-based adaptation (CBA) is that it increases resilience. Yet, the concept of resilience is treated inconsistently in CBA, obscuring discussion of the limitations and benefits of resilience thinking and undermining evaluation of resilience outcomes in target communities. This paper examines different participatory assessm...

Climate change impacts on marine fisheries are being observed in tropical regions, including northern Australia and the Pacific. In the Torres Strait, Islanders have a long association with their sea country that holds significant cultural, social and economic importance. Future impacts of climate change on marine fisheries stocks and supporting ha...

Exposure to disturbance is rarely considered in marine protected area planning. Typically, representing and replicating the habitat types present within protected areas is used to spread the risk of protecting frequently disturbed sites. This was the approach used during the 2004 re-zoning of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP) via the Repre...

Commercial marine fishing contributes significantly to the Australian economy, and has great importance for coastal communities. However, climate change presents significant challenges for Australia's fishing industries, now and into the future. With greater use of targeted information, the fishing industry will be better placed to minimise the neg...

The natural resilience of coral reefs and their ability to resist and recover from disturbance may be supported by managing user access, including regulating the anchoring of vessels. The process of targeting site-based local management actions and evaluating success is central to the adaptive management process. We describe an example of such a pr...

This chapter focuses on the temporal dynamics, spatial extent and cumulative impacts of current and future drivers of change on Great Barrier Reef water quality, and subsequent impacts on marine ecosystems in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. These include the acute influences of large flood events driven by extreme weather, salinity stress, trop...

Pacific Island countries have an extraordinary dependence on fisheries and aquaculture. Maintaining the benefits from the sector is a difficult task, now made more complex by climate change. Here we report how changes to the atmosphere–ocean are likely to affect the food webs, habitats and stocks underpinning fisheries and aquaculture across the re...

This publication includes: (i) a summary of the technical presentations provided to the Workshop participants on the implications of climate change for Pacific fisheries and aquaculture; and (ii) the outcomes of discussions by participants on the priority adaptations that Pacific island countries and territories (PICTs) can implement to reduce risk...

Climate change is considered to be a major environmental threat and there is a national priority to better establish the likely effects of climate change on Australia’s fisheries. Positive and negative impacts of climate change on marine fisheries are already being observed in tropical regions, including the GBR and Pacific. In the Torres Strait re...

En complément de l'ouvrage intitulé "Vulnerability of tropical Pacific fisheries and aquaculture to climate change", qui analyse de manière exhaustive les effets possibles du changement climatique sur les plans visant à maximiser les avantages économiques et sociaux tirés de la pêche et de l'aquaculture en Océanie, le présent document fait la synth...

This chapter sets the scene for this book by describing the physical, biological and social diversity of the tropical Pacific; the demography of the region; the nature of local economies and limitations to economic development; and the importance of oceanic, coastal and freshwater fisheries and aquaculture to economic development and government rev...

In this chapter, we assess the vulnerability of the mangrove, seagrass and intertidal flat habitats in the tropical Pacific that support coastal fisheries. We do this by examining the effects that changes to surface climate and the tropical Pacific Ocean (Chapters 2 and 3) are expected to have on the plants that define these habitats. This exposure...

Climate change is now considered the greatest long-term threat to coral reefs, with some future change inevitable despite mitigation efforts. Managers must therefore focus on supporting the natural resilience of reefs, requiring that resilient reefs and reef regions be identified. We develop a framework for assessing resilience and trial it by appl...

Marine capture fisheries are an important source of protein globally, with coastal and oceanic fish providing a rich source of essential fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals. Fisheries also support economies and important social structures in many nations, particularly developing nations (Allison et al., 2009). Marine fisheries are under increasing...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) provide place-based management of marine ecosystems through various degrees and types of protective actions. Habitats such as coral reefs are especially susceptible to degradation resulting from climate change, as evidenced by mass bleaching events over the past two decades. Marine ecosystems are being altered by direc...

The frequency and severity of mass coral bleaching events are predicted to increase as sea temperatures continue to warm under a global regime of rising ocean temperatures. Bleaching events can be disastrous for coral reef ecosystems and, given the number of other stressors to reefs that result from human activities, there is widespread concern abo...

Anomalously high sea surface temperatures (SST) have led to repeated mass coral bleaching events on a global scale. Existing satellite-based systems used to monitor conditions conducive to bleaching are based on low-resolution (0.5°, ∼50 km) SST data. While these systems have served the research and management community well, they have inherent wea...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) provide place-based management of marine ecosystems through various degrees and types of protective actions. Habitats such as coral reefs are especially susceptible to degradation resulting from climate change, as evidenced by mass bleaching events over the past two decades. Marine ecosystems are being altered by direc...