Wetlands Australia 32: An expedition to one of Australia’s remote wetlands

Authors: Andy Warmbrunn (Senior Coral Sea Marine Park Officer) and Martin Russell (Manager, Coral Sea Marine Park) - Parks Australia

An expedition to survey one of Australia’s remotest Ramsar sites, in the Coral Sea, will help us understand its biodiversity and improve its management.

Parks Australia manages seven of Australia’s 66 Ramsar sites. At Christmas Island National Park, you’ll find The Dales, home to endemic crabs and Hosnies Springs which supports mangrove stands. Pulu Keeling National Park and Ashmore Marine Park provide important resting sites for migrating birds and lagoons that support thriving communities of large predatory fish, sharks and sea turtles. Elizabeth and Middleton Reefs near Lord Howe Island provide critical habitats for species like black cod and the Galapagos shark, while Kakadu National Park is home to waterbirds, fish, crocodiles and more.

Finally, 300 kilometres offshore, beyond the Great Barrier Reef, you’ll find the Coringa-Herald and Lihou Reefs and Cays that together make up the Coral Sea Reserves Ramsar site.

South West Coringa Islet. Photo: Matt Guest - Parks Australia

Situated within Australia’s largest marine park, the Coral Sea Marine Park, Coringa-Herald and Lihou Reefs is a place where tiny islets and cays lay sprinkled across the endless blue vista. Here, birds rule, turtles breed and the whistling wind and crashing ocean provide a beautiful background concerto. The 24 islets and cays contain near pristine and internationally significant reef ecosystems, sand cays and islets covered with grasslands and thick forests. Uninhabited and rarely visited, these habitats provide the perfect peaceful environment for breeding seabirds and nesting turtles. The globally rare Pisonia grandis, a flowering tree that is part of the Bougainvillea family, plays a particularly important role in providing shelter and nesting habitat for these visiting seabirds.

In December 2019, marine park staff and researchers from Parks Australia and the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service spent two weeks at the site, assessing the health of a range of environmental indicators including vegetation cover, nesting conditions and post-nesting movements of turtles, seabird breeding numbers and the occurrence of micro-plastics and marine debris.

A project of this breadth requires a range of survey methods: the team used drones to map the vegetation and buried temperature loggers to monitor sand temperatures and help us understand the likely future sex ratios of turtle hatchlings. They also attached satellite tags to departing turtles and monitored for the presence of invasive species using special fauna traps.

The voyage has been critical to building our understanding of this important Ramsar site and the broader Coral Sea Marine Park. The data will be used to establish biodiversity baselines, inform future management, assess management performance and enable us to compare the health of this site against similar sites in the adjacent Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.

Red Footed Boobies (Sula sula). Photo: Andy Warmbrunn - Parks Australia

Further information

• Parks Australia – Australian Marine Parks