Sydney, Aug 25 (Inditop.com) The tiniest fish on the Great Barrier Reef are warning of profound changes taking place in the reef’s natural systems, thanks to human activity.
A little more than an inch long, the gobies are so small and cryptic they are often invisible to the casual visitor. But they make up almost half of all the fish life on the reef, says David Bellwood, professor at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.
“These fish may be tiny, but they are very important. They are telling us that the world has changed, and in ways we do not understand. That we may not be able to manage things as well as we hoped,” ichthyologist Bellwood said.
“In 1998 there was a major coral bleaching event that affected corals across a huge area of the reef. After some years, quite a lot of the coral has recovered — and looks more or less as it once did.”
“But the gobies have not come back. Something is not right if the fastest breeders of the reef are still missing. Overall, the coral fish fauna are still in a degraded state — after 30 generations.”
Bellwood has devoted almost 20 years to the study of what many might imagine to be the least significant of fish on the reef. He feels that they may be far more important than might appear, as indicators of the health status of the reef, said an ARC Centre release.
“Gobies are among the reef’s most plentiful species. They live fast and die young, in vast numbers. Many big reef fish live 10 years or more: a typical goby lasts just 100 days. Everything eats them — they are the ‘Tim Tams’ of the reef. For every 10 that wake up in the morning only nine go to sleep at night,” he said.
Because their generations turn over so quickly, gobies provide a highly sensitive indicator of changes that may be taking place, far more so than the longer-lived species, like large fishes or turtles.
