The State of the Marine Environment Report for Australia (SOMER): process, findings and perspectives

SOMER, the first comprehensive description of Australiaʹs marine environment, human uses and impacts, and management, was produced for Australiaʹs government to provide information for a national marine conservation plan. SOMER was based on 90 commissioned reports by 140 scientists. It consists of three Technical Annexes (31 papers); a Technical Summary intended for environmental managers; an overview of the major findings; and an executive summary. SOMER found that Australiaʹs marine environment was of great national and global value. While its condition was rated as ‘generally good’ (largely because of the large areas of sparsely inhabited coastlines and seas), major problems included declining inshore water quality because of elevated nutrients and sediments; associated declines in estuarine communities and die-back of temperate seagrass, particularly in the south-east and south-west; widespread beach and ocean litter and localised ‘hotspots’ of heavy metal, hydrocarbon and organochlorine pollution in some metropolitan and industrialised areas; threats to inshore corals; loss of saltmarsh and mangroves on developed coastlines; declines in some fish stocks; effects of trawling on the benthos; introductions of exotic species (particularly toxic dinoflagellates); outbreaks of native species such as crown-of-thorns starfish and Drupella snails; and declining marine environments around urban areas. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the achievements and deficiencies of SOMER.