Management Concern: Low  

Adequacy of Information: Good

Summary extracts from Outlook Report 2009

• Changes in seagrass communities appear to be mainly due to natural cycles of decline and recovery although influenced by run-off from catchments.
• Seagrass meadows are habitat constructors and provide nursery areas for juvenile prawns, fishes, crabs and marine crayfish, all of which are important to commercial and recreational fisheries.
  
• Approximately 6000km² of seagrass meadows occur along the Queensland coast, both in shallow inshore areas and deeper water. An unknown, but larger area probably occurs in the deeper, offshore water of the Great Barrier Reef lagoon.
  
• Most of the routine defence training activities carried out in the Great Barrier Reef have negligible impacts. Individual high impact activities are carefully managed and confined to specific localised areas, and limited to a few weeks per year.

What do we know?

Relevant pages from Outlook Online include:

• Trends in seagrass distribution in the Great Barrier Reef
  
• Global distribution of coral, mangrove and seagrass diversity
  
• Diversity and distribution of shallow seagrass beds in the Great Barrier Reef
• Trends in seagrass distribution in the Great Barrier Reef
  
• Defence - Outlook Report 2009 supporting information

Existing policies and management actions

• Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Zoning Plan
• Environmental Impact Assessment
  
• Plans of Management
  
• State Coastal Management Plan 2002
  
• Coastal Ecosystem Management Position Paper

Future management requirements

• Draft Queensland Coastal Management Plan
  
• Biodiversity strategy

Defined research questions

• There are currently no defined research questions for this topic. Research questions will be developed, giving priority to interactions/issues that are of most concern to management.

Related information

• Current Research and Monitoring