Bardi-Jawi Rangers joined forces with the Australian Institute of Marine Science in 2018 to develop a monitoring partnership for looking after Sea Country. The monitoring program was designed to provide scientific data to address the main concerns of Bardi-Jawi Rangers regarding the health and status of their marine resources (increased visitation, recreational fishing, climate change), and to align with management objectives in their existing Healthy Country Plans. Participatory mapping of Sea Country by Bardi-Jawi and Oorany Rangers was used as the basis of the program’s sampling design, to best assess location of monitoring sites and also provide a permanent record of local ecosystem knowledge.
Monitoring occurs once a year during August, and targets benthic organisms, fish and year-round in-situ water temperature. Surveys are conducted with remotely operated systems that allow collection of long-term data which can be archived and queried at a number of levels. Fish data are collected using single-camera Baited Remote Underwater Video Systems (BRUVS) at coral reef and mangrove habitats along the east (2 sites) and west (2 sites) of the Dampier Peninsula. Benthos data are collected using DropCam, a still photography tripod system deployed from a small vessel that collects images of benthic organisms along a set transect following GPS track coordinates. There are 3 sites for benthic data collection (1 west, 2 east of Dampier Peninsula), all on solid reef; at one of these sites, benthic data are also collected via photo transects by walking on emergent reef at low tide. Temperature data are collected with HOBO loggers at benthic data collection sites (1 east, 1 west of Dampier Peninsula).
All data are collected by the rangers with support from AIMS. Data analysis occurs at AIMS, where video and photos are scored to estimate fish abundance and diversity, as well as the abundance of coral and other benthic organisms of interest. Temperature data contributes to AIMS’ National Temperature Data Program.