Simon D Goldsworthy

South Australian Research and Development Institute | SARDI · Marine Ecosystems

Across the world’s oceans, our knowledge of the habitats on the seabed is limited. Increasingly, video/imagery data from remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) and towed and drop cameras, deployed from vessels, are providing critical new information to map unexplored benthic (seabed) habitats. However, these vessel-based surveys involve consi...

Background For diving, marine predators, accelerometer and magnetometer data provides critical information on sub-surface foraging behaviours that cannot be identified from location or time-depth data. By measuring head movement and body orientation, accelerometers and magnetometers can help identify broad shifts in foraging movements, fine-scale h...

Assessing environmental changes in Southern Ocean ecosystems is difficult due to its remoteness and data sparsity. Monitoring marine predators that respond rapidly to environmental variation may enable us to track anthropogenic effects on ecosystems. Yet, many long-term datasets of marine predators are incomplete because they are spatially constrai...

Marine predators recovering from historic, commercial, over-harvesting can create conservation challenges when they prey on vulnerable species. Pinniped predation of seabirds presents one such challenge and identifying the source colonies experiencing seal predation are needed to inform conservation management and decision planning. Here, we presen...

Report reviews threats to Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) in the Adelaide Dolphin Sanctuary, located in the Port River and Barker Inlet, South Australia

Globally, the bycatch of marine mammals in fisheries represents the greatest source of human-caused mortality that threatens the sustainability of many populations and species. The Australian sea lion (Neophoca cinerea) is an endangered species, whose populations off South Australia (SA) have been subject to bycatch in a demersal gillnet fishery ta...

106,107 ✉ replying to A. V. Harry & J. M. Braccini Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03463-w (2021) Our global analysis 1 estimated the overlap and fishing exposure risk (FEI) using the space use of satellite-tracked sharks and longline fishing effort monitored by the automatic identification system (AIS). In the accompanying Comment, Harry...

This article is a response to Murua et al.'s Matters Arising article in Nature, "Shark mortality cannot be assessed by fishery overlap alone," which arose from arising from N. Queiroz et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1444-4 (2019).

Management of gases during diving is not well understood across marine mammal species. Prior to diving, phocid (true) seals generally exhale, a behaviour thought to assist with the prevention of decompression sickness. Otariid seals (fur seals and sea lions) have a greater reliance on their lung oxygen stores, and inhale prior to diving. One otarii...

Most extant fur seal species have discrete breeding ranges, and it is assumed that prior to sealing they were even more separate. However, post sealing most populations have made dramatic recoveries and in the process of so doing have recolonized their previous ranges and possibly further afield. At three locations, Crozet Is., Macquarie Is. and Ma...

Australian sea lions Neophoca cinerea are endemic to Australia, with their contemporary distribution restricted to South Australia (SA) and Western Australia (WA). Monitoring of the species has proved challenging due to prolonged breeding events that occur non-annually and asynchronously across their range. The most recent available data from 80 ex...

Genetic bottlenecks can reduce effective population sizes (Ne), increase the rate at which genetic variation is lost via drift, increase the frequency of deleterious mutations and thereby accentuate inbreeding risk and lower evolutionary potential. Here, we tested for the presence of a genetic bottleneck in the endangered Australian sea lion (Neoph...

This report assesses the efficacy of alternative strategies for managing seal-fisher interactions in the gillnet sector of South Australia’s Commercial Lakes and Coorong Fishery (LCF), including the use of deterrents and alternative fishing methods. It uses a range of information obtained through fishing trials undertaken by commercial fishers in a...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0231577.].

Spencer Gulf is a region of high economic and cultural importance to South Australia. It was the focus of a broad attempt to establish ecosystem-based management of the State’s coastal, estuarine and marine environments in the early 2000s. This initiative resulted in the Living Coast Strategy and Marine Planning Framework for South Australia, but n...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) migrate between Austral-winter calving and socialising grounds to offshore mid- to high latitude Austral-summer feeding grounds. In Australasia, winter calving grounds used by southern right whales extend from Western Australia across southern Australia to the New Zealand sub-Antarctic Islands. During the...

Finding food is crucial to the survival and reproductive success of individuals. Fidelity to previous proftable foraging sites may bring benefts to individuals as they can allocate more time to foraging rather than searching for prey. We studied how environmental conditions infuence when lactating long-nosed fur seals (Arctocephalus forsteri) adopt...

Southern Ocean ecosystems are under pressure from resource exploitation and climate change1,2. Mitigation requires the identification and protection of Areas of Ecological Significance (AESs), which have so far not been determined at the ocean-basin scale. Here, using assemblage-level tracking of marine predators, we identify AESs for this globally...

Understanding the effects of human exploitation on the genetic composition of wild populations is important for predicting species persistence and adaptive potential. We therefore investigated the genetic legacy of large-scale commercial harvesting by reconstructing, on a global scale, the recent demographic history of the Antarctic fur seal (Arcto...

The Retrospective Analysis of Antarctic Tracking Data (RAATD) is a Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research project led jointly by the Expert Groups on Birds and Marine Mammals and Antarctic Biodiversity Informatics, and endorsed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. RAATD consolidated tracking data for mul...

The Retrospective Analysis of Antarctic Tracking Data (RAATD) is a Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research project led jointly by the Expert Groups on Birds and Marine Mammals and Antarctic Biodiversity Informatics, and endorsed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. RAATD consolidated tracking data for mul...

Understanding causes of population change is critical for conservation. Quantifying these causes can be difficult, especially for hard to sample animals like marine vertebrates (e.g. pinnipeds). One solution is to investigate spatiotemporal differences in a species' body condition by measuring body size and mass. Collecting traditional morphologica...

Long-nosed fur seals (Arctocephalus forsteri) were tagged as pups in colonies on Kangaroo Island, South Australia in eight consecutive pupping seasons from 1988–89 to 1995–96. Thirty-nine tagged animals were sighted on the southern Australian coast, being 0.89% of those tagged. They were aged from 9 months to 14 years 6 months, with half in their s...

The shelf and oceanic waters of the Kangaroo Island–Bonney Coast region are important foraging habitats for top marine predators in the ecosystem; however, the dynamics between the two distinct water types have not been investigated. This study examined the spatial and temporal variability of oceanographic parameters in the southern waters of Austr...

Tracking data have led to evidence-based conservation of marine megafauna, but a disconnect remains between the many 1000s of individual animals that have been tracked and the use of these data in conservation and management actions. Furthermore, the focus of most conservation efforts is within Exclusive Economic Zones despite the ability of these...

Interactions of the South Australian Sardine Fishery (SASF) with short-beaked common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) during purse-seine operations have been assessed annually since 2004-05. The report details patterns of observer coverage in the fishery, compares observed and reported rates of dolphin encirclement and mortality, assesses the effective...

Tracking data have led to evidence-based conservation of marine megafauna, but a disconnect remains between the many thousands of individual animals that have been tracked and the use of these data in conservation and management actions. Furthermore, the focus of most conservation efforts is within Exclusive Economic Zones despite the ability of th...

We investigated how foraging ecotypes of female long-nosed fur seals (Arctocephalus forsteri) could be identified from vibrissa stable isotopes. We collected regrowths of vibrissae from adult females (n = 18) from Cape Gantheaume, Kangaroo Island, South Australia from two breeding seasons (2016, 2017). The period represented by the regrowth was kno...

Effective ocean management and the conservation of highly migratory species depend on resolving the overlap between animal movements and distributions, and fishing effort. However, this information is lacking at a global scale. Here we show, using a big-data approach that combines satellite-tracked movements of pelagic sharks and global fishing fle...

This project reports on a program that (i) assessed perceptions of the fishing industry and the community on the economic impacts of the operational and trophic interactions with seals on seafood and other species, (ii) estimate the costs to fin fish aquaculture from stock losses, deterrent methods and maintenance arising from seal interactions, (i...

Central place foragers often change their foraging behaviour in response to changes in prey availability in the environment. Lactating Long-nosed fur seals (LNFS; Arctocephalus forsteri) at Cape Gantheaume in South Australia have been observed to display alternate foraging strategies where they forage on the shelf in summer and switch to oceanic fo...

In this paper we combine analyses of satellite telemetry and molecular data to investigate spatial connectivity and genetic structure among populations of shortfin mako (Isurus oxyrinchus) in and around Australian waters, where this species is taken in recreational and commercial fisheries. Mitochondrial DNA data suggest matrilineal substructure ac...

A central paradigm in conservation biology is that population bottlenecks reduce genetic diversity and population viability. In an era of biodiversity loss and climate change, understanding the determinants and consequences of bottlenecks is therefore an important challenge. However, as most studies focus on single species, the multitude of potenti...

The Great Australian Bight Research Program has generated extensive new knowledge about the Great Australian Bight (GAB) system. Integrating disparate datasets (including old and new knowledge) is a challenge for any location, but is increasingly important given the expansion of the marine industries constituting the blue economy. This is particula...

Evaluating how populations are connected by migration is important for understanding species resilience because gene flow can facilitate recovery from demographic declines. We therefore investigated the extent to which migration may have contributed to the global recovery of the Antarctic fur seal (Arctocephalus gazella), a circumpolar distributed...

R-code for “A global cline in a colour polymorphism suggests a limited contribution of gene flow towards the recovery of a heavily exploited marine mammal.”

In recent years, interactions between long-nosed fur seals (Arctocephalus forsteri) and gillnet fishers in South Australia’s Lakes and Coorong Fishery have increased, and impacts to the fishery through the depredation of catches and gear damage have been reported. A potential solution to this issue involves the use of deterrent methods to scare sea...

Recent advances in high throughput sequencing have transformed the study of wild organisms by facilitating the generation of high quality genome assemblies and dense genetic marker datasets. These resources have the potential to significantly advance our understanding of diverse phenomena at the level of species, populations and individuals, rangin...

A central paradigm in conservation biology is that population bottlenecks reduce genetic diversity and negatively impact population viability and adaptive potential. In an era of unprecedented biodiversity loss and climate change, understanding both the determinants and consequences of bottlenecks in wild populations is therefore an increasingly im...

Sperm whales have been identified under Marine Bioregional Plans as key features in the Great Australian Bight (GAB). Although commercial whaling of sperm whales in Australian waters ceased in 1978 there is no evidence of recovery of sperm whale populations. Information on the current distribution and abundance of sperm whales in the region, which...

Significance Understanding the key drivers of animal movement is crucial to assist in mitigating adverse impacts of anthropogenic activities on marine megafauna. We found that movement patterns of marine megafauna are mostly independent of their evolutionary histories, differing significantly from patterns for terrestrial animals. We detected a rem...

Recent advances in high throughput sequencing have transformed the study of wild organisms by facilitating the generation of high quality genome assemblies and dense genetic marker datasets. These resources have the potential to significantly advance our understanding of diverse phenomena at the level of species, populations and individuals, rangin...

The expanding blue economy means the oil and gas industry is just one of many activities in marine and coastal ecosystems. The future management of ecosystems such as the Great Australian Bight (GAB) should be based on a sound knowledge of the physical, ecological, economic and social interactions among the human and natural system components. The...

FULL REPORT AVAILABLE AT: http://www.pir.sa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/300058/Experimental_field_trials_to_test_if_alternative_sea_lion_excluder_devices_SLEDs_adequately_prevent_Australian_sea_lions_from_entering_rock_lobster_pots.pdf This project tested the efficacy of two new sea lion excluder devices (SLEDs) in preventing entry of seals...

Hunting and other human pressures have reduced many wild animal populations. Understanding how populations respond to these (and other) pressures is a central question in conservation biology. The Antarctic fur seal (Arctocephalus gazella), a marine mammal that breeds on islands all around Antarctica, provides an interesting case study. This specie...

Among bird species with defined breeding seasons, rates of reproductive success are higher among individuals that breed earlier in the season and decrease as the season progresses. Seasonal decreases in breeding success have been explained by decreases in prey availability or by variations in parental “quality,” mediated by age-related experience o...

Policy-and decision-makers require assessments of status and trends for marine species, habitats, and ecosystems to understand if human activities in the marine environment are sustainable, particularly in the face of global change. Central to many assessments are statistical and dynamical models of populations, communities, ecosystems, and their s...

Top predator populations, once intensively hunted, are rebounding in size and geographic distribution. The cessation of sealing along coastal Australia and subsequent recovery of Australian Arctocephalus pusillus doriferus and long-nosed A. forsteri fur seals represents a unique opportunity to investigate trophic linkages at a frontier of predator...

A pdf of this report is available to download at: http://www.pir.sa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/289128/Mitigating_operational_interactions_with_short-beaked_common_dolphin_Delphinus_delphis_application_of_the_South_Australian_Sardine_Fishery_industry_Code_of_Practice_2015-16..pdf This is the tenth report on the effectiveness of the industr...

Satellite telemetry data was used to predict at sea spatial usage of five top order and meso-predators; Antarctic fur seals (Arctocephalus gazella), macaroni penguins (Eudyptes chrysolophus), king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus), black browed albatross (Diomedea melanophrys), and light mantled albatross (Phoebetria palpebrata). All were tagged a...

Full report available at: http://www.frdc.com.au/research/final-reports/Pages/2015-035-DLD.aspx

Marine telemetry expands the knowledge of the biology of marine species at risk: their life cycles, activities, interactions, habitats, and threats. Four seal species in Canada and Australia are faced with distinctive and divergent management problems. This article examines their conservation status, legal protection, and the role that telemetry ha...

Weaning in mammals is typically thought of as the transition from reliance on maternal milk to feeding independently. Current theory suggests a complex process involving mothers imparting enough resources to offspring as to ensure survival without compromising both prior and future reproductive efforts, and the demands of offspring whose primary co...

Describing patterns of connectivity throughout a species range is critical to conservation management. In common with other mammals, pinnipeds typically display male-biased dispersal. Earlier studies using mitochondrial DNA showed that the endangered Australian sea lion (Neophoca cinerea) exhibits extreme matrilineal structure throughout its range....