Interview: Cuts to premier scientific body to make Australia risk "brain drain"

Australia is risking a "brain drain" should planned cuts to chief scientific body's climate science program go ahead as the central government implements its "innovation" agenda to the detriment of high valued coastal ecosystems, said David Booth, Professor of Marine Ecology, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS).

The global marine environmental science community has always struggled to receive adequate funding for its work, yet understanding the marine environment underpins the world's understanding climate change.

"I'm gravely concerned lately with what I see is a drop in public good science funding," Booth told Xinhua.

Further cuts to marine research programs, exemplified by Australia's chief scientific body the CSIRO, but also at the country's universities and research centers who seek industry partnerships though the government's industry-partnerships drive risks reducing "very, very important" field work by experienced researchers.

"A lot of the very good models are driven by ground trothing and what's actually happening out there, so we need all of these arms working," Booth said, adding the potential 175 CSIRO job cuts will create a "weak link" in a nation that's been a leader in marine research and innovation.

"The big looser won't be the individual necessarily, it will be Australia," Booth said.

"The balance of power in understanding in things like climate change will shift right away from Australia which I don't think is a very clever thing to do."

Booth has been undertaking a 17-year population study monitoring arrival and persistence of tropical fish along Australia's east coast, documenting what's known as the tropicalization of fish species, the shifting of key habitats further to the poles due to climate change.

Australia's east coast happens to be a "global hotspot" of shifting habitats not only due to rising temperatures, but the East Australian Current (EAC) -- the current made famous by the Pixar movie Finding Nemo -- has been strengthening and travelling further south, Booth said.

"So, we see all sorts of things like incursions of sea urchins way down into Tasmania eating all the kelp to the detriment of fisheries and things like crayfish, but to the benefit of these little tropical fish which love that urchin barren kind of habitat," Booth said.

The habitat changes have caused a one-third reduction over the past five years to Tasmania's prime, high-value crayfish, or rock lobster fishery -- currently fetching 100 Australian dollars per kilogram as live export -- through habitat loss, pests and toxic loss from an algal blooms.

Though not a large influence to Australia's economy, the changing of fish species distribution is creating tensions in other areas of the world such as the north sea where commercially important fish stocks are no longer able to be accessed within a fleet's sovereign waters.

"It doesn't take much to move an important fish outside of the British sovereign waters and fishable waters into either open ocean or into one of the other (European) countries waters," Booth said.

"This has been the issue. It really has hit home climate change because it's not just the distribution that's changing, it's the fishing countries that fish are available to."

The Paris Climate Summit agreement to limit global warming to a two-degree Celsius rise however is not enough, Booth said, advocating for the views of the Pacific nations for a 1.5-degree Celsius limit.

"It doesn't sound like much, (but) in the ocean for instance, half a degree makes a huge difference in terms of the strength of currents, the expansion of water, sea level rise (and) the tolerance of organisms," Booth said.

"A lot of these fish and other organisms are used to very stable temperatures."

However the long-term sustainability of the coastal resources isn't just predicated on combatting climate change that's affecting off-shore and estuary resources such as sea-grass and mangrove beds that provide a nursery for fisheries, which are fixable.

"It's climate change linking with overfishing (and pollution, among other impacts) that's tips it over (to destruction) a lot earlier," Booth said.

"Climate change is a harder one to deal with but there are other factors... that we can deal with to stave off climate change until we get some better solutions." Endit