Marine Plants Project

The Department of Environment and Conservation’s WA Herbarium has an extensive collection of macro algae and angiosperms from Western Australia’s marine areas and estuaries.

The Marine Plant Project will provide ready access to authoritative current names for WA’s marine flora and access to some 20,000 specimen details, including geographic localities, habitat information and, where available, images.

Electronically captured information on the State’s marine plants is integrated within the information delivery system FloraBase. Current names, images, descriptions and the known distribution of land vascular plants, based on WA Herbarium holdings have been available electronically through FloraBase since 1995 and descriptions of taxa are gradually being added to progress the on-line flora of Western Australia. The Marine Plant Project will eventually provide species descriptions and tools for species identification of WA’s marine plants in the same way as those progressively being made available for land vascular flora.

The Marine Plant Project is a joint venture between the Department of Environment and Conservation’s Western Australian Herbarium and Marine Conservation Branch with close collaboration from CSIRO, Murdoch University and University of WA.

Initial funding received from Coastwest/Coastcare in 2003 enabled inventory of the marine plant collections that were housed at various locations in Perth and the development of a plan to database all collections. The WA Herbarium’s curator of algae, Cheryl Parker, was appointed Project Manager and the number of specimens, their curatorial status and estimated number of undetermined specimens were gathered from collections housed at CSIRO laboratories, Murdoch University and The University of Western Australia. The WA Herbarium already housed a collection of 6,000 macro algae and marine and estuarine angiosperms; all databased but with many unnamed specimens.

Initial funding also allowed databasing of some specimens housed in other herbaria. Collections were brought to the WA Herbarium and trained database operators entered the specimen label information, verified the locality and recorded latitude and longitude co-ordinates for each specimen location.

The second stage of funding was obtained from a Natural Heritage Trust grant in 2005. This enabled the completion of specimen databasing and the appointment of an experienced Phycologist, Dr John Huisman, who has been contracted to verify or update names on specimens and identify unnamed specimens and images considered suitable for inclusion in the on-line Marine Plants information system within FloraBase. A major task assigned to Dr Huisman was the updating of the WA Marine Plants census.

The specimen database is supported by an authoritative census of WA’s Marine Plants with 1,000 macro-algae and marine flowering plant species, together with references to other sources of information about them. The comprehensive work carried out by Dr Roberta Cowan from Murdoch University in compiling the Australian Marine Algal Name Index (AMANI) is acknowledged as a basis for the WA Marine Plant Census.

All of WA’s marine macro algae specimens are now housed in the WA Herbarium algal herbarium and some 14,000 have now been databased and added to the original WA algal herbarium of 6,000 sheets.

Development of the Marine Plant Project to the end December 2005 will deliver online:

  • authoritative, up-to-date names for the approximately 1,000 species of marine macro algae listed to date for WA
  • distribution maps based on geocodes of specimens
  • images of species where available
  • How to Collect and Document Marine Plants — guidelines for collecting algae to add to the growing knowledge base.

Well-prepared collections form the basis of all marine plant studies. A specimen has little scientific value unless detailed notes are recorded at the time of collection. The publication of guidelines will ensure that those undertaking marine studies efficiently collect and document new collections of marine flora to extend the information base available to researchers, community groups and volunteers.

The Project seeks funds for the next stage of the Project that will maintain the census of WA marine plants and add detailed family, genus and species descriptions. A later stage is planned to enable on-line identification as is being planned for all of WA’s plant species.

A number of example descriptions of marine plants are available as follows:

 
Department of Conservation and Land Management Natural Heritage Trust