Tiger sharks support the characterization of the world’s largest seagrass ecosystem

Austin J. Gallagher (), Jacob W. Brownscombe, Nourah A. Alsudairy, Andrew B. Casagrande, Chuancheng Fu, Lucy Harding, S. David Harris, Neil Hammerschlag, Wells Howe, Antonio Delgado Huertas, Sami Kattan, Andrew S. Kough, Andre Musgrove, Nicholas L. Payne, Adrian Phillips, Brendan D. Shea, Oliver N. Shipley, U. Rashid Sumaila, Mohammad S. Hossain and Carlos M. Duarte
Additional contact information
Austin J. Gallagher: Beneath The Waves
Jacob W. Brownscombe: Carleton University
Nourah A. Alsudairy: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
Andrew B. Casagrande: ABC4Films, Cinema Science Division
Chuancheng Fu: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
Lucy Harding: Trinity College Dublin
S. David Harris: Beneath The Waves
Neil Hammerschlag: University of Miami
Wells Howe: Beneath The Waves
Antonio Delgado Huertas: Instituto Andaluz de Ciencias de la Tierra (CSIC‐UGR)
Sami Kattan: Beneath The Waves
Andrew S. Kough: Daniel P. Haerther Center for Conservation and Research, John G. Shedd Aquarium
Andre Musgrove: Bahamas Dive Guides
Nicholas L. Payne: Trinity College Dublin
Adrian Phillips: Bahamas Dive Guides
Brendan D. Shea: Beneath The Waves
Oliver N. Shipley: Beneath The Waves
U. Rashid Sumaila: University of British Columbia
Mohammad S. Hossain: Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT)
Carlos M. Duarte: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Seagrass conservation is critical for mitigating climate change due to the large stocks of carbon they sequester in the seafloor. However, effective conservation and its potential to provide nature-based solutions to climate change is hindered by major uncertainties regarding seagrass extent and distribution. Here, we describe the characterization of the world’s largest seagrass ecosystem, located in The Bahamas. We integrate existing spatial estimates with an updated empirical remote sensing product and perform extensive ground-truthing of seafloor with 2,542 diver surveys across remote sensing tiles. We also leverage seafloor assessments and movement data obtained from instrument-equipped tiger sharks, which have strong fidelity to seagrass ecosystems, to augment and further validate predictions. We report a consensus area of at least 66,000 km2 and up to 92,000 km2 of seagrass habitat across The Bahamas Banks. Sediment core analysis of stored organic carbon further confirmed the global relevance of the blue carbon stock in this ecosystem. Data from tiger sharks proved important in supporting mapping and ground-truthing remote sensing estimates. This work provides evidence of major knowledge gaps in the ocean ecosystem, the benefits in partnering with marine animals to address these gaps, and underscores support for rapid protection of oceanic carbon sinks.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-33926-1 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-33926-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-33926-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().