Management Concern: High    

Adequacy of Information: Good

Summary extracts from Outlook Report 2009

• The Great Barrier Reef is maintaining seagrass biodiversity with local fluctuations in inshore waters.
• Observations suggest that there have been shifts in species composition in some seagrass beds, but do not indicate any Reef-wide changes.
• 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.

What do we know?

Relevant pages from Outlook Online:

• 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

• Seagrass Watch 
• Reef Rescue Marine Monitoring Program
• Fisheries: legislative management arrangements
• Fisheries: other management tools
• Fisheries: information systems 
• The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Zoning Plan
• 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