Marine Management: Marine Conservation

The research papers in this volume highlight some of the major issues in marine conservation and offer some exciting insights into future directions for research and management. It is particularly pleasing that the issue focuses on seagrasses, a component of marine biodiversity that is well recognized and with profound ecological significance, but has suffered widespread decline in its distribution over the past half century. The absence of any accurate inventory of seagrass resources makes it difficult to accurately assess the cumulative impact of human activity on them. However, the need to conserve seagrasses is well recognized and it is exciting to see the significant advances being made in bringing conservation biology techniques to seagrass research. The work of Waycott and Kenworthy (this issue) is clearly showing dramatic differences in the life-history strategies, genetic diversity and population structure of different seagrasses. It suggests that seagrasses are far from the homogenous organism that they seem to have been viewed as up until now. This also supports findings elsewhere which suggest that many of the classic paradigms regarding seagrass biology and ecology are based on inappropriate generalizations from a few species. For example, the work of Paling and others (in this issue) challenges the generally held view that we are unlikely to be able to transplant temperate species of seagrass back into disturbed areas.