Rottnest Island Seagrass Monitoring Program
(January 2017 - March 2017)

On Friday 13th January WADDI kicked off its Rottnest Island Seagrass Monitoring Program.

Volunteers photographed and georeferenced defined areas of seagrass at Parker Point Sanctuary Zone. These photographs will be analysed and mapped using CPC and GIS to build a temporal picture of the nuisance cyanobacteria, Lyngbya majuscula in order to monitor its increasing presence during summer and its eventual decline during autumn.

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On Saturday and Sunday 14th and 15th, sites at Thompson Bay and Geordie Bay were established and assessed using WADDI's Seagrass Monitoring protocol.

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Volunteers conducted shoot counts for Posidonia spp. and counted stem density of Amphibolis spp. with the aim of establishing a baseline of these indicators for future monitoring and research.

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Huge thanks to our volunteers, Andrew Moore, Helen Allison, Eloise Ashworth, Tanika Shalders, Pei Ying, and Louise Benson. Vice-chair, Dr Alicia Sutton contributed to our survey design and calibrated the volunteers for shoot counts.

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Mike Rule from DPaW and Mike van Keulen, thanks so much for helping us to get to this point, your scientific advice and equipment loans have been crucial!

 

Rottnest Island Authority support WADDI with planning, logistics and accommodation.