Lear, Karissa O., Ebner, Brendan C., Fazeldean, Travis, Bateman, Rebecca L., and Morgan, David L. (2024) Effects of coastal development on sawfish movements and the need for marine animal crossing solutions. Conservation Biology, 38 (4). e14263.

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Abstract

Although human-made barriers to animal movement are ubiquitous across many types of ecosystems, the science behind these barriers and how to ameliorate their effects lags far behind in marine environments compared with terrestrial and freshwater realms. Using juvenile sawfish in an Australian nursery habitat as a model system, we aimed to assess the effects of a major anthropogenic development on the movement behavior of coastal species. We compared catch rates and movement behavior (via acoustic telemetry) of juvenile green sawfish (Pristis zijsron) before and after a major coastal structure was built in an important nursery habitat. Acoustic tracking and catch data showed that the development did not affect levels of sawfish recruitment in the nursery, but it did constrain movements of juveniles moving throughout the nursery, demonstrating the reluctance of shoreline-associated species to travel around large or unfamiliar coastal structures. Given the current lack of information on human-made movement barriers in the marine environment, these findings highlight the need for further research in this area, and we propose the development of and experimentation with marine animal crossings as an important area of emerging research.

Item ID:	85865
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1523-1739
Copyright Information:	© 2024 The Authors. Conservation Biology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
Date Deposited:	17 Jun 2025 22:20
FoR Codes:	31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310305 Marine and estuarine ecology (incl. marine ichthyology) @ 100%
SEO Codes:	28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280102 Expanding knowledge in the biological sciences @ 100%
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