Australias EEZ

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Barcoding Australian Fish
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Commenced October 2004
Bronwyn Innes, Bob Ward, Peter Last and Gordon
Yearsley CSIRO Marine Research, Australia
Tyler Zemlak, Jeremy de Waard and Paul
Hebert University of Guelph, Canada
Moore Foundation Wealth from Oceans Flagship
(CSIRO)
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Australias EEZ 200 nautical mile limit 8 x 106
km2 excluding EEZ off Antarctica 2.5x the size
of the Australian land mass
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• Estimate of wild caught fisheries production
  2003-2004
• (US) 360 million
• Source ABARE
• Level of expenditure on recreational fishing
  1999-2000
• (US) 1360 million
• Source ABARE

Estimated 4,500 species finfish (3,600
described) 25 endemic to Australian waters
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Australian Seafood Handbook
Great Barrier Reef Seabed Biodiversity project
Collections from museums, research institutions
Serendipidous samples
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• Progress so far

Sequenced 1172 specimens for 655bp region of COI
( 283 species, 138 genera) 954 specimens (237
species) put into BoLD Remaining unentered data
will be put into BoLD in June 2005
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Platycephalus longispinis,
Mean genetic distance within species
0.22 between species 15.55
Twelve species of flathead (family
Platycephalidae)
scale
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Squalus sp.
S. mitsukurii
Mean genetic distance within species
0.33 between species 4.17
S.acanthias
S.megalops
scale
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longtail
yellowfin
Thunnus species
Atlantic blackfin
bigeye
Atlantic bluefin
Mean genetic distance within species
0.11 between species 1.04
southern bluefin
albacore
Pacific bluefin
scale
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Barcoding Australian Fish
Pairwise distance among members of different
taxonomic levels

Pairwise distance Kimura 2 parameter
725 sequences/individuals, 165 described species
(each with two or more individuals) 44 genera
(teleosts and elasmobranchs)
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COI neighbour-joining tree of 206 fish species
and 754 sequences
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Representative tree output from BoLD
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• Tuna Identification

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Tuna identification
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Identification of shark fins

• Large amounts of illegal capture of sharks in
  northern Australian waters, largely for fins
  alone
• Quality fins sell for as much as 6 000 - 8 000
  / kg in Hong Kong.
• Globally, gt100 million sharks killed per year
• Slow growing, long lived, long gestation, low
  fecundity.
• Many species morphologically very similar, and
  many are protected.

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Fish fillet identification
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Egg identification
Positive ID sequencing of COI confirms
identification of eggs/larvae as blue mackerel
1.05 1.30mm diameter
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Future work

• Complete barcoding of Australian fish
• Commercial species
• Non-commercial species
• Link with CAML (Census of Antarctic Marine Life)

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Questions?