Management Concern: Moderate  

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.
  

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
  
• Distribution of deep water seagrasses in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park
  
• Resilience of seagrass beds
  
• Deepwater seagrasses in northeastern Australia - how deep, how meaningful?
  
• Seagrass as nursery for fish and prawn species 
  

Existing policies and management actions

• State Coastal Management Plan 2002
  
• Coastal Ecosystem Management Position Paper
• Seagrass Watch
  
• Fisheries: legislative management arrangements
• Fisheries: other management tools
• Fisheries: information systems 
• The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Zoning Plan
• Implementation of WTO conditions and recommendations from the latest EPBC assessment: progress by fishery
• East coast fin fish fishery independent review
• Queensland Fisheries Strategy 2009-2014 
• Queensland Fisheries policies and legislation
  
• Queensland Fisheries monitoring 
• Queensland Management of Commercial Fisheries
  
• Queensland Management of Recreational Fisheries 

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