Michelle Devlin

Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science | CEFAS · Division of Environment and Ecosystems

Inland fresh- and brackish aquaculture is a key component of global food security, however, its rapid growth has impacted adversely on the environment. The future growth of the aquaculture industry will need to balance food production more effectively against the exploitation of natural resources. This review considers the case for inland aquacultu...

Anthropogenic pressures such as climate change and nutrient pollution are causing rapid changes in the marine environment. The relative influence of drivers of change on the plankton community remains uncertain, and this uncertainty is limiting our understanding of sustainable levels of human pressures. Plankton are the primary energy resource in m...

The 2022 Scientific Consensus Statement brings together the latest scientific evidence to understand how land-based activities can influence water quality in the Great Barrier Reef, and how these influences can be managed to improve water quality outcomes for the Great Barrier Reef. This document, the ‘2022 Scientific Consensus Statement Summary’,...

The 2022 Scientific Consensus Statement on land-based impacts to Great Barrier Reef water quality and ecosystem condition brings together the latest scientific evidence to understand how land-based activities can influence water quality in the Great Barrier Reef, and how these influences can be managed.

Assessments of the water quality in coastal zones often rely on indirect indicators from contributing river inputs and the neighbouring ocean. Using a novel combination of distance accumulation cost methods and an ocean-colour product derived from SENTINEL-3 data, we developed a probabilistic method for the assessment of dissolved inorganic nitroge...

Plankton form the base of marine food webs, making them important indicators of ecosystem status. Changes in the abundance of plankton functional groups, or lifeforms, can affect higher trophic levels and can indicate important shifts in ecosystem functioning. Here, we extend this knowledge by combining data from Continuous Plankton Recorder and fi...

The recent widespread and recurrent coral bleaching events over the Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral reef system on Earth and a hotspot of marine biodiversity, are a reminder of the vulnerability of reef ecosystems to human activities and a warming world. Protection of the Great Barrier Reef and similar reef ecosystems across Oceania requires...

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is a marine protected area subject to natural and anthropogenic disturbances. Water quality is critical for the health and protecting resilience of GBR coral ecosystems against the synergistic and cumulative pressures of tropical cyclones, marine heat waves, and outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish. The concentration o...

Seagrass beds provide a range of ecosystem services but are at risk from anthropogenic pressures. While recent progress has been made, the distribution and condition of South Pacific seagrass is relatively poorly known and selecting an appropriate approach for mapping it is challenging. A variety of remote sensing tools are available for this purpo...

In January 2013, tropical cyclone Oswald caused widespread flooding in the North-East coast of Australia, and large and highly episodic inputs into Princess Charlotte Bay (PCB, northern Great Barrier Reef). Freshwater outflows from the Normanby and Kennedy rivers, the two main rivers draining the adjacent catchments, resulted in drastic changes in...

Modern-day coral reef conservation requires connections between researchers, decision-makers and stakeholders to achieve holistic ecosystem-based management (EBM), rooted in and supported by local communities. However, the COVID-19 pandemic, global political and financial instability and growing concerns over emissions from air travel have meant th...

Remote sensing of ocean colour has been fundamental to the synoptic-scale monitoring of marine water quality in the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). However, ocean colour sensors onboard low orbit satellites, such as the Sentinel-3 constellation, have insufficient revisit capability to fully resolve diurnal variability in highly dynamic coastal environmen...

The use of ocean colour classification algorithms, linked to water quality gradients, can be a useful tool for mapping river plumes in both tropical and temperate systems. This approach has been applied in operational water quality programs in the Great Barrier Reef to map river plumes and assess trends in marine water composition and ecosystem hea...

COMMENTARY ON Present and future bright and dark spots for coral reefs through climate change. This is a commentary on Sully et al., 2022, https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16083

Nine metals including Al, Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb and Zn were analysed from sediment samples collected from 29 stations since 2007 from Bahraini waters. Within this study, it was investigated whether concentrations of these determinants are at concentrations above internationally established Assessment Criteria (AC). The majority of sites were c...

Intricate links between aquatic animals and their environment expose them to chemical and pathogenic hazards, which can disrupt seafood supply. Here we outline a risk schema for assessing potential impacts of chemical and microbial hazards on discrete subsectors of aquaculture—and control measures that may protect supply. As national governments de...

Plankton form the base of the marine food web and are sensitive indicators of environmental change. Plankton time series are therefore an essential part of monitoring progress towards global biodiversity goals, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity Aichi Targets, and for informing ecosystem-based policy, such as the EU Marine Strategy Fram...

Plankton form the base of the marine food web and are sensitive indicators of environmental change. Plankton time-series are therefore an essential part of monitoring progress towards global biodiversity goals, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity Aichi Targets, and for informing ecosystem-based policy, such as the EU Marine Strategy Fram...

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...

Water Quality issues in many Pacific countries are rising, with the increase in coastal populations and associated urban runoff but management requires contamination issues in the aquatic environment to be identified and prioritised. In Vanuatu and Solomon Islands there are few laboratories and resources to assess for the presence or impact of comp...

The Second World War in the Pacific has left a legacy of over 3800 wrecks on the ocean floor. These wrecks contain thousands of tons of oil and pose a risk to the marine environment. Estimates of current corrosion rates show many wrecks are at risk of structural collapse. However, the scale of threat posed by potentially polluting wrecks (PPW) to c...

The tropical waters of the Northern Arabian Gulf have a long history of maritime resource richness. High levels of biodiversity result from the complex matrix of coastal habitats, coral reefs and sea grass beds that characterise the region. Insight into the ongoing health of such habitats and the broader Kuwait maritime environment can be gauged by...

The resilience of coastal ecosystems and communities to poor environmental and health outcomes is threatened by cumulative anthropogenic pressures. In Kiribati, a developing Pacific Island country where human activities are closely connected with the ocean, both people and environment are particularly vulnerable to coastal pollution. We present a s...

Nearshore deterioration of water quality in Pacifc coastal waters is a growing problem, associated with increasing urban and industrial sewage discharges, and agricultural runoff. Published water quality studies in the Pacifc region are limited in both number and scope, making it difcult to resolve the extent of the issue or quantify the variability...

Aquaculture is predicted to supply the majority of aquatic dietary protein by 2050. For aquaculture to deliver significantly enhanced volumes of food in a sustainable manner, appropriate account needs to be taken of its impacts on environmental integrity, farmed organism health and welfare, and human health. Here, we explore increased aquaculture p...

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This paper presents a review around seagrass habitat in Tarawa Lagoon, Kiribati and explores the links between seagrass occurrence and the national priority issues of climate change, urban development, human health, nearshore fisheries, threatened species, ocean policy, research capacity and awareness. The contribution of healthy seagrass habitats...

Increasing direct human pressures on the marine environment, coupled with climate‐driven changes, is a concern to marine ecosystems globally. This requires the development and monitoring of ecosystem indicators for effective management and adaptation planning. Plankton lifeforms (broad functional groups) are sensitive indicators of marine environme...

This paper presents an approach for preparing a comprehensive national marine ecosystem assessment and its application to the marine and coastal areas of the State of Kuwait. The approach is based on a set of principles to enable diverse data sources, of differing data quality and salience, to be combined into a single coordinated national assessme...

An operational method to assess trends in marine water composition and ecosystem health during flood periods has been developed for the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), Queensland, Australia. This method integrates satellite water colour data with field water quality and ecosystem monitoring data and involves the classification of Moderate-Resolution Imag...

A combination of qualitative and semi-quantitative assessments was used to estimate the relative risk of water quality constituents to Great Barrier Reef ecosystem health from major sources in the Great Barrier Reef catchments, focusing on agricultural land uses. In this assessment, the risk was defined simply as the area of coral reefs and seagras...

Plankton are sensitive indicators of change and, at the base of marine food webs, they underpin important ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration and fisheries production. In the UK and the Northeast Atlantic region, change in plankton functional groups, or ‘lifeforms’, constructed based on biological traits, is the formally accepted policy...

The assessment of eutrophic conditions is a formal requirement of several European Directives. Typically, these eutrophication assessments use a set of primary indicators which include dissolved inorganic nutrients, chlorophyll, dissolved oxygen and secondary information such as phytoplankton community data. Each directive is characterized by a dif...

This assessment of environmental drivers and phytoplankton community in Kuwait (Arabian Gulf) describes changes in environmental conditions linked to the rapid urbanization over recent decades. To describe these changes, we have analyzed a long-term water quality dataset (1984–2017) and explored potential changes in a sub-set of phytoplankton commu...

Threats from climate change and other human pressures have led to widespread concern for the future of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR). Resilience of GBR reefs will be determined by their ability to resist disturbances and to recover from coral loss, generating intense interest in management actions that can moderate these processes. Here we q...

This data compilation synthesizes 36 static environmental and spatial variables, and temporally explicit modeled estimates of three major disturbances to coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR): (1) coral bleaching, (2) tropical cyclones, and (3) outbreaks of the coral‐eating crown‐of‐thorns starfish Acanthaster cf. solaris. Data are provided o...

The data and results of the UK second application of the OSPAR Common Procedure (COMP) for eutrophication were used as a case study to develop a generic system (i) to evaluate an observational network from a multi-variable point of view, (ii) to introduce additional datasets in the assessment, and (iii) to propose an optimized monitoring program to...

Corals of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have declined over the past 30 years. While reef state depends on the balance between disturbance and recovery, most studies have focused on the effects of disturbance on reef decline. We show that coral recovery rates across the GBR declined by an average of 84% between 1992 and 2010. Recovery was variable: S...

Increased loads of land-based pollutants are a major threat to coastal-marine ecosystems. Identifying the affected marine areas and the scale of influence on marine ecosystems is critical to assess the ecological impacts of degraded water quality and to inform planning for catchment management and marine conservation. Studies using remotely sensed...

Dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) runoff from Great Barrier Reef (GBR) catchments is a threat to coral reef health. Several initiatives address this threat, including the Australian Government's Reef 2050 Plan. However, environmental decision makers face an unsolved prioritization challenge: determining the exposure of reefs to DIN from individual...

Optically active water quality components (OAC) transported by flood plumes to nearshore marine environments affect light levels. The definition of minimum OAC concentrations that must be maintained to sustain sufficient light levels for conservation of light-dependant coastal ecosystems exposed to flood waters is necessary to guide management acti...

Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is under pressure from a suite of stressors including cyclones, crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS), nutrients from river run-off and warming events that drive mass coral bleaching. Two key questions are: how vulnerable will the GBR be to future environmental scenarios, and to what extent can local management action...

Understanding the flux and fate of nutrients and sediments from rivers is of global importance because of the effects of these materials on coastal ecosystems. The present study followed three flood events from upper tributaries of the Normanby River to Princess Charlotte Bay in the northern Great Barrier Reef (GBR) lagoon, Australia. During each e...

Marine environmental monitoring is undertaken to provide evidence that environmental management targets are being met. Moreover, monitoring also provides context to marine science and over the last century has allowed development of a critical scientific understanding of the marine environment and the impacts that humans are having on it. The seas...

Nine trace elements including As, Cd, Cu, Fe, Hg, Ni, Pb, V and Zn, and total petroleum hydrocarbons were analysed from water samples collected from 23 stations since 1984 from Kuwaiti coastal waters. Here it was investigated whether concentrations of these determinants are at levels above Kuwaiti and internationally established assessment criteria...

There have been many individual phytoplankton datasets collected across Australia since the mid 1900s, but most are unavailable to the research community. We have searched archives, contacted researchers,and scanned the primary and grey literature to collate 3,621,847 records of marine phytoplankton species from Australian waters from 1844 to the p...

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is currently experiencing widespread crown of thorns starfish (CoTS) outbreaks, as part of the fourth wave of outbreaks since 1962. It is believed that these outbreaks have become more frequent on the GBR and elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific and are associated with anthropogenic causes. The two widely accepted potential ca...

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is currently experiencing widespread crown of thorns starfish (CoTS) outbreaks as part of the fourth wave of outbreaks since 1962. It is believed that outbreaks have become more frequent on the GBR and elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific associated with anthropogenic causes. The two widely accepted potential causes are (1) an...

Scientific Data 3:160043 doi: 10.1038/sdata.2016.43 (2016); Published 21 Jun 2016; Updated 6 Dec 2016 A series of errors in our database were brought to our attention by readers, and have been corrected in an updated version of this database, which is accessible via the AODN at the following link: https://portal.aodn.

There have been many individual phytoplankton datasets collected across Australia since the mid 1900s, but most are unavailable to the research community. We have searched archives, contacted researchers, and scanned the primary and grey literature to collate 3,621,847 records of marine phytoplankton species from Australian waters from 1844 to the...

There have been many individual phytoplankton datasets collected across Australia since the mid 1900s, but most are unavailable to the research community. We have searched archives, contacted researchers, and scanned the primary and grey literature to collate 3,621,847 records of marine phytoplankton species from Australian waters from 1844 to the...

Marine protected areas can prevent over-exploitation, but their effect on marine diseases is less clear. We examined how marine reserves can reduce diseases affecting reef-building corals following acute and chronic disturbances. One year after a severe tropical cyclone, corals inside reserves had sevenfold lower levels of disease than those in non...

River runoffand associated flood plumes (hereafter river plumes) are a major source of land-sourced contaminants to the marine environment, and are a significant threat to coastal and marine ecosystems worldwide. Remote sensing monitoring products have been developed to map the spatial extent, composition and frequency of occurrence of river plumes...