Department of the Environment and Heritage Annual Report 2003-04

Department of the Environment and Heritage, 2004
ISSN 1441 9335

Review of performance: Outcome 2 - Antarctica (continued)

Protecting the Antarctic environment

Antarctic environment
Report on performance information

The Department minimises the human impacts of current activities, repairs past work sites, and undertakes research to ensure Antarctic resource management is based on sound scientific principles.

In 2003-04, the Department's work focused on:

environment protection laws;
international efforts to protect the Antarctic environment;
enhancing fisheries management;
understanding biodiversity;
understanding sea ice changes;
preventing and managing pollution; and
understanding ozone depletion.

The Australian Antarctic Division contributed to this output.

Antarctic environment

Objective
Activities
Environment protection laws
International efforts to protect the Antarctic environment
Enhancing fisheries management
Understanding biodiversity
Understanding sea ice changes
Preventing and managing pollution
Understanding ozone depletion
Results

Objective

To protect the environment of Antarctica, the Southern Ocean and the Territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands.

The Antarctic region - Antarctica, the Southern Ocean and the sub-Antarctic - encompasses diverse and often unique ecosystems, which are under increasing threat from human activities and environmental changes. At some locations - particularly around long-standing research stations - there is evidence of past human activity and, as Antarctic tourism increases, the pressures on the environment grow.

Australia has international obligations to protect the Antarctic environment under the Protocol on Environment Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, and under Australian legislation, notably the Antarctic Treaty (Environment Protection) Act 1980, the Antarctic Marine Living Resources and Conservation Act 1981 and the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

The Department administers relevant legislation to minimise the human impacts of current activities, which involves assessing the potential impacts of all Australian activities in Antarctica and issuing relevant approvals and permits.

International efforts to protect the Antarctic environment

The Department plays a leading role internationally through the Committee for Environmental Protection, of which the Director of the Department's Australian Antarctic Division is the current chair.

In recognition of its lead role in Antarctic tourism issues, Australia has been asked to coordinate work by Committee for Environmental Protection members to assess the suitability of existing environmental impact assessment processes to tourism and similar non-government activities.

Australia was again influential in the committee's deliberations on area protection and environmental impact assessment, and in securing the committee's endorsement for further development of Australia's model for Antarctic State of the Environment reporting (see the Antarctic Treaty System part of this annual report).

Australia's management plans for the Cape Denison historic precinct were endorsed by the committee, and plans to protect the unique seabird assemblages at Scullin and Murray Monoliths near Mawson station were endorsed for final consultation.

The Department also established a new international collaboration with Canada to work towards environmental guidelines for polar regions similar to the water quality guidelines available for mainland Australia.

Enhancing fisheries management

The Department leads scientific and policy responsibility for Australia's participation in the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, the International Whaling Commission and the Agreement for the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels.

Australian contributions to the working groups of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources during 2003-04 included considerable analysis of the commission's Ecosystem Monitoring Programme. The Australian Antarctic Division also contributed to:

assessing the abundance of toothfish and icefish;
assessing the status of several species of albatrosses; and
reducing the numbers of seabirds caught as by-catch on long lines.

The Department conducted further successful work to minimise seabird by-catch by increasing the rate at which fishing lines sink.

A major research voyage around Heard Island was completed. The voyage examined food web linkages so the fishery in the region can be managed sustainably. Researchers examined the food supply available to seals, penguins and albatrosses, which were satellite tracked from the island.

Understanding biodiversity

Ongoing work by biologists working for the Department is creating and populating Antarctic databases of known organisms, habitats and terrestrial vegetation communities. This work is to enable better understanding of the structure and genetic complexities of these communities and the consequences of environmental change.

Researchers developing Antarctic biodiversity databases of known organisms, habitats and terrestrial vegetation communities have found:

a new virus which is causing disease symptoms in plants on Macquarie Island, which is the southernmost plant virus found; and
a fungal infection of a moss on Heard Island, which was identified by morphological and genetic analyses, and characterised by gene sequencing.

A major reference text on the moss flora of Macquarie Island was also published.

The biodiversity of ecologically-important invertebrates (Collembola) in Antarctica, the sub-Antarctic islands, Australia and New Zealand is being explored using molecular and morphological techniques to better understand the distribution patterns of the species and to provide molecular data that will lead to automated species identification.

Several studies contributed to an understanding of how global change can lead to changes in biodiversity:

Antarctic nitrogen fixing microbes were isolated and examination of their DNA is underway to gain a better insight on their evolution and genetic relationship with their tropical relatives.
Isolates of Antarctic microalgae have been established at the University of Malaya Algae Culture Collection. Laboratory studies on the effect of ultraviolet radiation and temperature on the growth, biochemical composition, fatty acid profiles, and antioxidant enzymes of selected microalgae are being undertaken to compare the responses of Antarctic and tropical microalgae.
Antarctic reefs, like their tropical counterparts, harbour a high diversity of animal life. Investigations are determining how global warming will affect food availability to the animals that comprise the structural components of the reefs and to predict the cascading effect through the community as one component changes.

Continuing investigations on the conservation status of marine organisms, which use the Antarctic continent and sub-Antarctic islands for breeding and moulting, showed:

The population of elephant seals on Macquarie Island has decreased at about 1.2 per cent per annum in the three decades since the 1960s. The population is now approximately 40 per cent of what it was in the 1950s. However, the rate of decrease has slowed in recent years.
Fur seal pup production on Macquarie Island has slowed over the last four seasons after 25 years of sustained annual increase. The cause for the change is unknown, but may be related to increased pup predation by Hooker Sea Lions. Pup production at Heard Island during the 2003-04 season was 1278, an increase of 27 per cent since the last census in 2000-01.

Global warming is causing changes in terrestrial ecosystems, and the effects on terrestrial life are most likely to be greatest around regional boundaries like the Antarctic Polar Front zone, where the sub-Antarctic islands are located. Research into how Antarctic and sub-Antarctic organisms and ecosystems will respond to climate change is being conducted simultaneously on Heard, Kerguelen and Marion Islands in association with the French and South African Antarctic Programmes. Preliminary data indicate that development times for key plant species between Kerguelen and Heard Islands may differ by at least five weeks in some localities.

Disease response kits were deployed to each Australian station to be used to investigate the cause of death if unusual numbers of dead wildlife are discovered in Antarctica.

Understanding sea ice changes

Scientists working for the Department showed that the concentration of the trace chemical methanesulphonic acid (MSA) - an atmospheric aerosol produced as a result of phytoplankton activity at the surface of ocean waters - in a coastal ice core is strongly correlated with sea ice extent in the region. Thus, the ice core record provides a proxy for sea ice extent before modern satellite monitoring, and shows evidence of an ice edge retreat of more than 100 kilometres since about 1950.

A successful research voyage to the Antarctic sea ice zone was made by RSV Aurora Australis in September to October 2003. This involved 40 scientists from six countries and included projects on sea ice physics, sea ice ecosystems, and the interactions between them. With an unprecedented level of ice-shelf collapse in some areas of the Antarctic in recent years, scientists are trying to understand the melting and freezing processes and their overall influence on sea water properties.

Preventing and managing pollution

The Department's scientific research is providing the advice to support environmental management and remediation. This work is giving Australia the capability to fulfil its international obligations to clean up abandoned waste disposal sites in Antarctica without creating additional environmental impacts.

Eco-toxicology work, which is providing the scientific basis to ensure clean-up results in significant environmental improvements, has shown that threshold concentrations for contaminants that cause impacts to Antarctic fauna and flora may be different from threshold concentrations in other regions. For this reason, environmental quality guidelines developed in other regions (such as the Australian and New Zealand Environment Conservation Council Water Quality Guidelines) may not be appropriate for Antarctica.

Contaminants in Antarctica are not locked away frozen in the ice as previously thought. Research by the Department indicates that dispersal and spreading of contaminants on land in Antarctica is very site specific and largely controlled by freeze-thaw processes and the presence of water. At some sites, the annual summer melt causes enormous quantities of water to flow, causing contaminants to be mobilised and carried to otherwise clean sites downstream. This information is being used to prioritise site remediation.

In 2003-04, Departmental employees carried out scientific monitoring designed to identify environmental impacts on three time scales during the clean-up of the Thala Valley waste tip near Casey station. Small Antarctic marine crustaceans were used as environmental 'sentinels' to detect short-term impacts during tip removal. The crustaceans were held in enclosures at sites near the tip and elsewhere, and will be analysed for contaminants in their tissues. In the medium-term, settlement of marine invertebrates was used to determine whether the clean-up disrupted sensitive early life stages. Long-term monitoring will indicate whether removal of the tip has allowed nearby marine seabed communities to recover.

Experiments show that under Antarctic conditions, natural biological breakdown of petroleum hydrocarbons such as fuel and oils is very slow and could take hundreds of years. However, by managing factors that limit natural breakdown, such as adding nutrients or water, we can significantly increase the rates of in situ bioremediation in Antarctica. This creates the opportunity for some contaminated soils to be treated in Antarctica rather than be returned to Australia for disposal. In situ bioremediation would be significantly cheaper than removal and return to Australia.

A review of oil spill trajectory models for Antarctic marine waters concludes that at present there is insufficient data available on near shore water currents to build reliable oil spill dispersion models for the shipping approaches to most research stations in Antarctica.

Understanding ozone depletion

Light detecting and ranging temperature measurements showed that the stratospheric region was abnormally cold in the 2003 winter. As a result, scientists working for the Department were able to predict a very deep ozone hole several months before the equal largest hole on record developed. The prediction received extensive national and international media coverage. This programme is contributing to international projects and the data are also being archived at the World Ozone and Ultraviolet Data Centre.

Results

The Australian Antarctic Division maintained certification of its environmental management system to the international standard (ISO 14001).

At the 2004 Antarctic Treaty Consultative meeting Australia achieved Antarctic Specially Managed Area status for the Cape Denison precinct of the 1912-14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition led by Douglas Mawson.

A major research voyage around Heard Island was completed. Research findings will help to support the ecologically sustainable management of the fishery in the region.

Work to minimise seabird by-catch by increasing the sink rate of fishing lines was recognised internationally by the awarding of a prestigious Pew Marine Conservation Fellowship to Australian Antarctic Division scientist Dr Graham Robertson. Dr Robertson initiated the manufacture of weighted longlines, conducted scientific trials into their effect on by-catch, persuaded fishing companies to use the new techniques, and publicised the results to encourage widespread adoption of the weighted longlines.

The Department removed 1000 cubic metres of contaminated material from the Thala Valley waste tip near Casey as the first stage in a ten-year plan to clean up Australia's old waste sites in Antarctica.

Report on performance information

Tables 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47 and 48 report performance results against the indicators in the 2003-04 portfolio budget statements.

Table 41: To protect the Antarctic environment *(departmental appropriation)*
Performance information(a)	Result
'Environmental impact assessments reviewed or completed for all relevant activities in Antarctica.'	Potential environmental impacts of activities undertaken in Antarctica by the Department's Australian Antarctic Division and other Australians were assessed and relevant approvals and permits issued. Ninety-three environmental impact assessments were authorised during the 2003-04 financial year.
'Australia's obligations under the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty are met.'	Obligations were met.
'AAD [Australian Antarctic Division] provides the Chair and other support for the CEP [Committee for the Environmental Protection].' 'Environmental policy proposals and briefings completed for ATCM [Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting] and CEP [Committee for the Environmental Protection].' 'Maintain ISO14001 certification for the Environmental Management System (EMS).' 'Develop and undertake environmental audits to ensure compliance with the EMS.'	Australia continued its leading role in the Committee for the Environmental Protection, of which the Director of the Department's Australian Antarctic Division's is the current chair. The Division maintained ISO14001 certification and conducted regular (six monthly) audits as part of a mandatory three-year certification cycle, which involved a broad level, 'spot check' of parts of the Environmental Management System. Division management reviewed these audits and corrective action was taken where appropriate. As part of the three-year certification cycle, external audits of Antarctic activities were planned for 2004-05, mainly: an audit of Davis and Mawson stations (an audit of the remaining stations is planned for the following summer); and an audit of the Division's Head Office (including the Kingston and University of Tasmania complexes) and the Macquarie Wharf No. 4 cargo handling facility in Hobart.