Sustainability wins the day…twice
It’s a long way from France to the beaches of Queenscliff, but for one young University of Melbourne PhD student, that trip has already delivered considerable rewards.
Bastien Rochowski (above right) was recently acknowledged in the Royal Society of Victoria’s Young Scientist Research Prizes, as a co-winner of the non-human biological prize, sharing the award with another Melbourne PhD student, Daniel Ohlsen (below right). It was due recognition for both students’ exemplary work on biodiversity and sustainability.
“I had been doing work on dolphins while studying in France, but I was very interested in other marine mammals like sharks” says Zoology researcher Bastien Rochowski. “So while I didn’t know any English, I applied for a scholarship to do my Master’s here, with a little help from my friends correcting my rough grammar. The rest as they say is history!”
The Royal Society of Victoria was established in 1854 with an aim to promote and advance scientific endeavors, as well as making scientific information available to the general public.
The Young Scientist prizes are open to post-graduate-doctoral students in all areas of the biological, physical and earth sciences, and are designed to recognise good science while providing students with further experience in presenting scientific findings to their peers and the general public.
For Mr Rochowski, the award is a vote of confidence in his work on marine mammals and in particular, the fishing of sharks in deeper waters. It’s even more important given the recent review of the Fisheries Management Act and the ban enacted on the Dutch super trawler, Abel Tasman.
“There’s an increasing demand for the fishing of sharks, either for use in food such as fish and chips, or even using liver oil in cosmetics. While we’ve seen a lot of recent fishing in shallow waters, the next step is to go deeper and deeper to increase the size or value of fishing hauls.”
This poses problems for the sustainability of the deeper living shark population, which are not as productive and take longer to mature than those who dwell in shallower waters.
“While these sharks live longer and are harder to fish, they have only five to ten pups every two years,” says Mr Rochoswki.
“We could see a situation where sharks such as the Greeneye Spurdog or Briershark are unable to reproduce for the first decade of their lives, so if we fish them we could feasibly lose a generation of that species.
“Australian waters have only a small amount of fish, despite the great diversity of species, and that’s why we have to be careful with how we approach fishing for shark in deeper waters.”
During his award presentation, Mr Rachowski asked the audience of more than 70 scientists, academics, environmentalists and the general public to imagine a life in Australia without fish and chips. “It’s going to happen soon if we aren’t better informed.
“The problem with sharks is that they have such a bad reputation. Everyone wants to save the dolphins, but we really don’t know what will happen if we ‘delete’ sharks from the food web. We’re just making assumptions and we need to be smarter about it.”
Conserving what we have is also a high priority for Daniel Ohlsen’s work. The third year PhD candidate in the School of Botany is looking at the secret life of ferns, and how mapping the DNA sequences within a particular species can help scientists work out how a species has migrated over time and how closely related one species is to another.
“We want to conserve our biodiversity, as our planet would be a pretty boring place if we didn’t try to conserve what’s here,” he says.
“And from a purely selfish angle, people can benefit a lot from biodiversity. We still don’t know what sorts of foods or medicines or services these plants are providing to the ecosystem that we survive off, or whether these plants could provide medicine or food to humans specifically.
“Just because we don’t get use out of a plant now, doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve to be conserved.”
In studying Australia’s four largest fern ‘families’ – Aspleniaceae, Pteridaceae, Blechnaceae, Hymeno-phyllaceae – Mr Ohlsen and the research team of which he is part are breaking new ground, as no DNA work had been done on these groups previously.
“It helps clarify our classifications of these plants and helps make clear their distinctions, as it is often hard to separate the species visually.”
“Now that we have these unique DNA markers, we’re able to put together a genealogy for the species, much like we can do already with many trees, and we’ve already been able to discover new species by doing this.”
Discoveries like this, says Mr Ohlsen, are important for broader conservation efforts. “Plant taxonomy is important for conservation as you need to know what’s out there before you can conserve it.”
“In our case, what was thought to be a critically endangered species has now been found to be quite widespread and more common than we originally thought.”
“Communicating these findings is an important part of research as we can better provide information on where our conservation efforts and resources should be distributed.”
www.science.unimelb.edu.au