Efficacy of physical removal of a marine pest: the introduced kelp Undaria pinnatifida in a Tasmanian Marine Reserve

By C. Hewitt, Marnie L Campbell, F. McEnnulty, Kirrily M. Moore, Nicholas B. Murfet, B. Robertson, Britta Schaffelke. Biological Invasions, 2005

116 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The tools available for incursion response in the marine environment are limited, both in number and in situations where they can be appropriately applied. The ability to make decisions as to when and where a response should occur is limited by knowledge of the efficacy and costs. We undertook an evaluation of manual removal of Undaria pinnatifida sporophytes in a new incursion in the Tinderbox Marine Reserve in Tasmania over a 2.5 year study period. Plants were removed, from a 800 m2 area, on a monthly basis to minimise the likelihood of maturation of sporophytes and subsequent release of zoospores. While manual removal appears to have significantly reduced the number of developing sporophytes, the persistence of ‘hot spots’ through time suggests that either microscopic stages (zoospores, gametophytes or sporelings) create a ‘seed bank’ that persists for longer than 2.5 years or selective gametophyte survival in microhabitats occurs. In order for manual removal of Undaria to be effective a long-term commitment to a removal activity needs to be coupled with vector management and education initiatives to reduce the chances of re-inoculation and spread, with monitoring (and response) on a larger spatial scale for the early detection of other incursion sites, and with a treatment to remove persistent microscopic stages.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3d6d525a40a714f56b05d7eb51a083bcc36ecbf7

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Citations in the corpus

The Invasive Species Challenge in Estuarine and Coastal Environments: Marrying Management and Science (2008, background): “…California, USA 1996 Successful Culver and Kuris 2000 sabellid parasite of abalone Undaria pinnatifida Tasmania, Australia 1997 Ongoing Hewitt et al. 2005 wakame seaweed Catham Islands, New Zealand 2001 Successful Wotton et al. 2004 California, USA 2002 Unsuccessful; reverted to…”
Impacts of introduced seaweeds (2007, background): “Undaria pinnatifida populations dominate space in many regions where the species has been introduced (e.g., Sinner et al. 2000, Forrest and Taylor 2002, Hewitt et al. 2005).”
Concepts for biocontrol in marine environments: is there a way forward? (2015, unknown): “Most approaches to marine pest control rely on diver removal and physical or chemical treatments (Hewitt et al. 2005), which may have limited efficacy, or are labour-intensive and impractical to apply at broad spatial scales (Piola et al. 2009).”
Rapid assessment of the distribution of marine non-native species in marinas in Scotland (2006, background): “Early identification of non-native species is critical for successful eradication (Simberloff 2003, Tsutsui and Suarez 2003, Anderson 2005, Hewitt et al. 2005 ).”
The expanding range of Undaria pinnatifida in southern New Zealand: distribution, dispersal mechanisms and the invasion of wave-exposed environments (2007, background): “…that this species displays overlapping generations, with sporophytes present year round, a change attributed to less extreme seasonal fluctuations in ocean temperatures in these regions compared to the native range of U. pinnatifida (Brown 1999; Thornber et al. 2004; Schaffelke et al. 2005).”