Australia’s marine biodiversity underpins considerable economic wealth, for fisheries and aquaculture amounting to a gross value of $A2.2 billion (2007-08) annually. Marine life also provides invaluable ecosystem services including coastal defence against damaging waves and storms, processing of pollution, oxygen production and greenhouse gas regulation.

Climate variability and change are likely to cause several fundamental changes to plant and animal life in our oceans: (i) changes in distribution and abundance; (ii) faster physiology, earlier timing of life history events such as breeding, and some species moving beyond their thermal tolerances; and (iii) changes in community structure and function (including general productivity). Of particular concern is that impacts of climate change, in conjunction with other human stresses such as fishing, eutrophication and species introductions, could shift coastal ecosystems beyond tipping points and thrust them into entirely new states that no longer function in the same way, and may not provide the ecosystem goods and services that we have become accustomed to.