Pia Bessell-Browne

Pia Bessell-Browne
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation | CSIRO · Oceans and Atmosphere

PhD, BSc (Hons)

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26
Publications
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758
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Publications

Publications (26)
Article
Full-text available
There is a need to develop water quality thresholds for dredging near coral reefs that can relate physical pressures to biological responses and define exposure conditions above which effects could occur. Water quality characteristics during dredging have, however, not been well described. Using information from several major dredging projects, we...
Article
As part of an investigation of the effects ofwater quality fromdredging/natural resuspension on reefs, the effects of suspended sediment concentrations (SSCs) (0, 30, 100 mg L−1) and light (~0, 1.1, 8.6 mol photons m−2 d−1) were examined alone and in combination, on the corals Acroporamillepora,Montipora capricornis and Porites spp. over an extende...
Article
Full-text available
Understanding pressure pathways and their cumulative impacts is critical for developing effective environmental policy. For coral reefs, wide spread bleaching resulting from global warming is occurring concurrently with local pressures, such as increases in suspended sediments through coastal development. Here we examine the relative importance of...
Article
Full-text available
The harvest control rules for many fish and invertebrate stocks, managed using stock assessments based on fitting population dynamics models to monitoring data, rely on biological reference points. These reference points are often related to unfished conditions (‘B0’) and are calculated assuming that biological parameters and their associated funct...
Article
Full-text available
The term “data-limited fisheries” is a catch-all to generally describe situations lacking data to support a fully integrated stock assessment model. Data conditions range from data-void fisheries to those that reliably produce quantitative assessments. However, successful fishery assessment can also be limited by resources (e.g., time, money, capac...
Article
Full-text available
The eastern Australian stock of orange roughy (Hoplostethus atlanticus) is a deep-water, long-lived species with a history of considerable exploitation during the late 1980s and early 1990s before being reduced to around 10% of unfished spawning biomass only a few years later, resulting in the closure of the fishery in 2006. Recent assessments have...
Article
Full-text available
Consideration of economic outcomes is commonplace in most fisheries management systems globally, although only a few jurisdictions have adopted an economic objective as the primary target for fisheries management. Such an objective has been adopted for Australia's federally managed fisheries, with maximum economic yield (MEY) identified as the prim...
Preprint
Full-text available
Ocean warming is increasing the incidence, scale, and severity of global-scale coral bleaching and mortality, culminating in the third global coral bleaching event that occurred during record marine heatwaves of 2014-2017. While local effects of these events have been widely reported, the global implications remain unknown. Analysis of 15,066 reef...
Article
Stock assessments based on fitting age-structured population dynamics models using the integrated approach usually require data on the length-/age-structure of fishery removals and age-length data to estimate key population parameters such as growth rates, recruitment, natural mortality rates and selectivity. The errors in the estimates of these po...
Article
Full-text available
Coral cover worldwide has been declining due to heat stress caused by climate change. Here we report the impacts of the 2015–2016 El Niño mass coral bleaching event on the coral cover of reefs located on central and northern atolls of the Maldives. We surveyed six reef sites in the Alifu Alifu (Ari) and Baa (South Maalhosmadulu) Atolls using replic...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Fisheries Queensland scientists conduct an annual beam trawl survey in south-eastern Queensland to collect information on pre-recruit eastern king prawns, blue swimmer crabs and snapper. After a successful pilot study was completed in 2006, the survey commenced in 2007 and has been conducted every year since, except in 2016. The survey provides an...
Article
Full-text available
Dredging in the marine environment to create and maintain safe, navigable shipping channels, and subsequent disposal of the material at sea in dredge material placement sites (spoil grounds) can generate large quantities of suspended sediment that can impact upon epibenthic marine communities. For sensitive taxa such as hard corals, understanding t...
Technical Report
Full-text available
There has been no previous stock assessment for school mackerel. This stock assessment used an age structured model with a yearly time step and length based selectivity. Only the south-east stock was considered for assessment as harvests for the north-east stock were small. Data inputs included total harvest, standardised catch rates and age and le...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Australian east coast spotted mackerel, Scomberomorus munroi, is a pelagic fish species harvested by commercial, charter and recreational fishers. It forms a single genetic stock in Queensland and New South Wales. The stock is shared with NSW although over 80 per cent of the harvest is from Queensland waters. Spotted mackerel exhibit schooling beha...
Article
Full-text available
Turbidity associated with elevated suspended sediment concentrations can significantly reduce underwater light availability. Understanding the consequences for sensitive organisms such as corals and crustose coralline algae (CCA), requires an understanding of tolerance levels and the time course of effects. Adult colonies of Acropora millepora and...
Article
Full-text available
The interaction between local, anthropogenic stressors, and larger scale regional/global stressors, is often used to explain the current poor condition of many corals reefs. This form of cumulative pressure is clearly manifested by situations where dredging projects happen to coincide with marine heatwaves that have caused coral bleaching. A key pr...
Article
Full-text available
Some coral species of the genus Porites can produce thick mucous sheets that partially or completely envelope the colony’s surface. This phenomenon has been reported many times, but the cause and ecological significance remains unclear. In this study, sheet production was examined in response to elevated suspended sediment concentrations associated...
Article
Full-text available
Dredging and related activities are common across nearshore marine environments, potentially threatening nearby ecosystems. Regulatory frameworks are essential for minimizing environmental impacts, yet rely heavily on a sound understanding of how ecosystems will respond to environmental stressors, and the thresholds that delineate benign and harmfu...
Article
Full-text available
Colonies of Coscinaraea marshae corals from Rottnest Island, Western Australia have survived for more than 11 months in various bleached states following a severe heating event in the austral summer of 2011. These colonies are situated in a high-latitude, mesophotic environment, which has made their long-term survival of particular interest as such...

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