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Western Australian museum runs naming competition for new kind of sea-slug discovered by scientists in the Indian Ocean

The Western Australian museum is running a public competition to name a new species of “flamboyant sea-slug”, part of an order named nudibranch.

The blue and orange creature is up to 8cm long and looks like a cross between a slug and a Pokémon.

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Queensland government study shows current funding is far less than what is needed to meet environmental targets and avoid reef being placed on Unesco watch list

Attempting to fix the water qualityfor the Great Barrier Reef will cost $8.2bn in the next decade but even then some of the targets will be impossible to meet, according to a landmark report commissioned by the Queensland government.

The targets are part of the federal government’s Reef 2050 Plan, the implementation of which is required by Unesco in order for the reef to avoid being included on the world heritage in danger list. Currently, state and federal governments are spending less than a tenth of what the report finds is required.

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Scientists say they have found a Greenland shark that is about 400 years old - making it the longest-living vertebrate known.

Agency application on ecological sustainability - call for public comments open from 15 August 2016 until 14 September 2016

Agency application on ecological sustainability - call for public comments open from 15 August 2016 until 14 September 2016

Climate change plots, characters and product placement could fire audiences to act on climate change.

In 2015, the Australian and Queensland governments agreed on targets to greatly reduce the sediment and nutrient pollutants flowing onto the Great Barrier Reef.

What we do on land has a real impact out on the reef: sediments can smother the corals, while high nutrient levels help to trigger more regular and larger outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish. This damage leaves the Great Barrier Reef even more vulnerable to climate change, storms, cyclones and other impacts.

Dealing with water quality alone isn’t enough to protect the reef, as many others have pointed out before. But it is an essential ingredient in making it more resilient.

The water quality targets call for sediment runoff to be reduced by up to 50% below 2009 levels by 2025, and for nitrogen levels to be cut by up to 80% over the same period. But so far, detailed information about the costs of achieving these targets has not been available.

Both the Australian and Queensland governments have committed more funding to improve water quality on the reef. In addition, the Queensland government established the Great Barrier Reef Water Science Taskforce, a panel of 21 experts from science, industry, conservation and government, led by Queensland Chief Scientist Geoff Garrett and funded by Queensland’s Department of Environment and Heritage Protection.

New work commissioned by the taskforce now gives us an idea of the likely cost of meeting those reef water quality targets.

This groundbreaking study, which drew on the expertise of water quality researchers, economists and “paddock to reef” modellers, has found that investing A$8.2 billion would get us to those targets by the 2025 deadline, albeit with a little more to be done in the Wet Tropics.

That A$8.2 billion cost is half the size of the estimates of between A$16 billion and A$17 billion discussed in a draft-for-comment report produced in May 2016, which were reported by the ABC and other media.

Those draft figures did not take into account the reductions in pollution already achieved between 2009 and 2013. They also included full steps of measures that then exceeded the targets. A full review process identified these, and now this modelling gives a more accurate estimate of what it would cost to deliver the targets using the knowledge and technology available today.

A future for farming

Importantly, the research confirms that a well-managed agricultural sector can continue to coexist with a healthy reef through improvements to land management practices.

Even more heartening is the report’s finding that we can get halfway to the nitrogen and sediment targets by spending around A$600 million in the most cost-effective areas. This is very important because prioritising these areas enables significant improvement while allowing time to focus on finding solutions that will more cost-effectively close the remaining gap.

Among those priority solutions are improving land and farm management practices, such as adopting best management practices among cane growers to reduce fertiliser loss, and in grazing to reduce soil loss.

While these actions have been the focus of many water quality programs to date, much more can be done. For example, we can have a significant impact on pollutants in the Great Barrier Reef water catchments by achieving much higher levels of adoption and larger improvements to practices such as maintaining grass cover in grazing areas and reducing and better targeting fertiliser use in cane and other cropping settings. These activities will be a focus of the two major integrated projects that will result from the taskforce’s recommendations.

A new agenda

The new study, produced by environmental consultancy Alluvium and a range of other researchers (and for which I was one of the external peer reviewers), is significant because nothing on this scale involving the Great Barrier Reef and policy costings has been done before.

Guidelines already released by the taskforce tell us a lot about what we need to do to protect the reef. Each of its ten recommendations now has formal government agreement and implementation has begun.

Alluvium’s consultants and other experts who contributed to the study – including researchers from CQ University and James Cook University – were asked to investigate how much could be achieved, and at what price, by action in the following seven areas:

1. Land management practice change for cane and grazing

2. Improved irrigation practices

3. Gully remediation

4. Streambank repair

5. Wetland construction

6. Changes to land use

7. Urban stormwater management

Those seven areas for potential action were chosen on the basis of modelling data and expert opinion as the most feasible to achieve the level of change required to achieve the targets. By modelling the cost of delivering these areas and the change to nutrient and sediments entering the reef, the consultants were able to identify which activities were cheapest through to the most expensive across five catchment areas (Wet Tropics, Burdekin, Mackay-Whitsunday, Fitzroy and Burnett Mary).

Alluvium’s study confirmed the water science taskforce’s recommendation that investing in some catchments and activities along the Great Barrier Reef is likely to prove more valuable than in others, in both an environmental and economic sense.

Some actions have much lower costs and are more certain; these should be implemented first. Other actions are much more expensive. Of the total A$8.2 billion cost of meeting the targets, two-thirds (A$5.59 billion) could be spent on addressing gully remediation in just one water catchment (the Fitzroy region). Projects with such high costs are impractical and highly unlikely to be implemented at the scale required.

The Alluvium study suggests we would be wise not to invest too heavily in some costly repair measures such as wetland construction for nutrient removal just yet – at least until we have exhausted all of the cheaper options, tried to find other cost-effective ways of reaching the targets, and encouraged innovative landholders and other entrepreneurs to try their hand at finding ways to reduce costs.

The value of a healthier reef

The A$8.2 billion funding requirement between now and 2025 is large, but let’s look at it in context. It’s still significantly less than the A$13 billion that the Australian government is investing in the Murray-Darling Basin.

It would also be an important investment in protecting the more than A$5 billion a year that the reef generates for the Australian economy and for Queensland communities.

The immediate focus should be on better allocating available funds and looking for more effective solutions to meet the targets to protect the reef. More work is still needed to ensure we do so.

If we start by targeting the most cost-effective A$1 billion-worth of measures, that should get us more than halfway towards achieving the 2025 targets. The challenge now is to develop new ideas and solutions to deliver those expensive last steps in improving water quality. The Alluvium report provides a valuable tool long-term to ensure the most cost-effective interventions are chosen to protect the Great Barrier Reef.

This article was written with contributions from Geoff Garrett, Stuart Whitten, Steve Skull, Euan Morton, Tony Weber and Christine Williams.

Read more of The Conversation’s Great Barrier Reef coverage, including articles by experts including Jon Brodie and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg.

John Rolfe has previously received funding from the National Environmental Research Program and the National Environmental Science Program for economic studies evaluating the costs and benefits of reef protection.

Shark, which would have reached sexual maturity at around 150 years, sets new record for longevity as biologists finally develop method to determine age

She was born during the reign of James I, was a youngster when René Descartes set out his rules of thought and the great fire of London raged, saw out her adolescent years as George II ascended the throne, reached adulthood around the time that the American revolution kicked off, and lived through two world wars. Living to an estimated age of nearly 400 years, a female Greenland shark has set a new record for longevity, scientists have revealed.

Related: Forget Nessie, now is the time to spot basking sharks in Scottish waters

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Observers are looking forward to an annual astronomical event that could to turn into a spectacular "meteor storm" in the early hours of Friday.

In a surprise result, eight paraplegic people regain partial movement after a one-year training program based on brain-controlled robotics.

Transocean Winner ran aground on Isle of Lewis, triggering environmental concerns

Tens of thousands of litres of diesel may have spilled into the ocean from an oil rig that ran aground on the Western Isles.

The Transocean Winner was carrying 280 tonnes of oil – more than 300,000 litres – when it was blown ashore in severe weather conditions on the western side of the Isle of Lewis early on Monday.

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UK government’s own projections expect onshore wind power and large-scale solar to cost less per megawatt hour than new nuclear by 2025

The government expects solar and wind power to be cheaper than new nuclear power by the time Hinkley Point C is completed, its own projections show.

Theresa May’s government last month made a surprise decision to delay a deal on Hinkley, prompting a renewed look at what alternatives could power Britain if ministers this autumn fail to back new reactors in Somerset.

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