There are many high-profile conservation movements that are dedicated to preserving vulnerable wildlife, plants and landscape. But what is being done to help 'at risk' marine environments?

If a reef, or a section of rainforest, or wetland, or desert is under threat, it makes sense to protect it by controlling certain activities within the affected area. These might include restrictions on the collection or extraction of its resources, both biological and physical, or a total ban on all collection and mining activities, or any of several other options.

In a similar way, to help the marine ecosystem we need to ensure that re-colonisers can gain access to threatened ecosystems. In other words, biological corridors need to be created so that, for example, planktonic larvae of both fish and invertebrates can enter a threatened or degraded reef and establish themselves. This aspect of reef conservation is known as ecological connectivity and is being seen as critical in coral reef protection.

Unfortunately, according to a recently published paper, ecological connectivity, or connectivity science as it is commonly known, "is not yet able to clearly indentify the specific measures for effective protection of connectivity." Having said this, Laurence McCook of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority in Queensland, Australia, feels that "given the urgency (of the need to protect reefs), it is better to act with incomplete knowledge than to wait for detailed understanding that may come too late."

Briefly here are some measures that should be adopted:

Protect a network of sites, rather than individual sites.

Include sites that are most likely to act as a refuge from likely disturbances.

Ensure that management strategies consider processes of connectivity.

Manage non-reserve areas to ensure intact ecosystem processes, sustainable fisheries and environmental quality.

Maximise the acquisition and use of existing information... recognising the potential value of community and traditional knowledge.

Ensure readiness to respond to events.

Communicate the importance of connectivity to stakeholders and policy makers.

Because of our incomplete knowledge of all the processes involved in connectivity science, McCook and his team emphasise that, "It is important to recognise that these recommendations remain inevitably a 'best-guess' or a set of 'rules of thumb' and will require careful consideration in each application."

In their view, it is also "important to... stress that adequate protection of ecosystem resilience requires elements: protecting connectivity is an important component but will not be sufficient unless well integrated with a range of other measures." They recognise that "adequate science for definitive protection of all aspects of connectivity is decades away".

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