Indonesia's globally significant seagrass meadows are under widespread threat

Abstract

Indonesia's marine ecosystems form a fundamental part of the world's natural heritage, representing a global maxima of marine biodiversity and supporting the world's second largest production of seafood. Seagrasses are a key part of that support. In the absence of empirical data we present evidence from expert opinions as to the state of Indonesia's seagrass ecosystems, their support for ecosystem services, with a focus on fisheries, and the damaging activities that threaten their existence. We further draw on expert opinion to elicit potential solutions to prevent further loss. Seagrasses and the ecosystem services they support across the Indonesian archipelago are in a critical state of decline. Declining seagrass health is the result of shifting environmental conditions due largely to coastal development, land reclamation, and deforestation, as well as seaweed farming, overfishing and garbage dumping. In particular, we also describe the declining state of the fisheries resources that seagrass meadows support. The perilous state of Indonesia's seagrasses will compromise their resilience to climate change and result in a loss of their high ecosystem service value. Community supported management initiatives provide one mechanism for seagrass protection. Exemplars highlight the need for increased local level autonomy for the management of marine resources, opening up opportunities for incentive type conservation schemes.

Social-ecological drivers and dynamics of seagrass gleaning fisheries

“…This study provides novel correlative evidence supported by Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK) that increasing seagrass density and condition supports a more Fig. 6 Non-metric MDS scaling configuration with superimposed Bray-Curtis similarity clusters at the 30% level for comparisons of a animal abundance and b catch weight between from invertebrate gleaning catches on seagrass at seven sites throughout Sulawesi, Indonesia productive fishery highlighting the need to protect these threatened systems (Unsworth et al 2018). By bringing together LEK with in field ecological and fisheries data we've been able to more fully understand the status, threats and changes to these fisheries as LEK is known to be strong in this region (Pilgrim et al 2008) (Fig.…”

“…Seagrass meadows have a high economic value due to their productivity and the array of ecosystem services (ES) they provide (Costanza et al 1997;Nordlund et al 2017;Unsworth et al 2019). Specifically, a key ES is the provision of shelter, food and nutrients to fish and invertebrate communities, including many species of value for commercial or subsistence fisheries (Unsworth and Cullen 2010;Unsworth et al 2018).…”

Habitat complexity influences the structure of food webs in Great Barrier Reef seagrass meadows

“…) and further losses are predicted in critical places as a result of multiple impacts (Unsworth et al. ). Seagrass loss means a loss of a wide range of important ecosystem services, including food web support for endangered fauna (Scott et al.…”

Toward a Coordinated Global Observing System for Seagrasses and Marine Macroalgae

“…Seaweed aquaculture also has been proposed as a way to mitigate eutrophication impacts (Chopin et al, 2001;Neori et al, 2004), and in certain locations on the coast of China, algal cultivation has reduced nutrients and resulting algal blooms, including toxic microalgae (Yang et al, 2014). But algal aquaculture has more often been detrimental, resulting in widespread seagrass loss (Eklöf et al, 2006;Unsworth R. K. et al, 2018).…”