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The long-isolated Southern Australian Marine ecoregion is home to many endemic species of red algae and marine invertebrates. Eighty-five percent of fish species here are endemic. Imagine a place where birds and mammals with names like wandering albatross, flesh-footed shearwater, rockhopper penguin, and weedy seadragon live!
The Southern Australian Marine ecoregion contains an enormous area where one-quarter of the world's species of red algae grow, of which 75 percent are endemic. Nearly 85 percent of 600 fish are endemic, and many diverse species can live here because of the mixture of warm waters from the west and cold waters from the south, as well as regular upwellings of nutrient-rich water from the ocean depths.
Millions of shearwaters come to the ecoregion to breed and raise their young. They share rocky and sandy nesting areas with many other seabirds, such as wandering and black-browed albatrosses, Australasian gannets, northern giant petrels, and rockhopper and little penguins. Australian sea lions live on the coasts but hunt in the sea, where they may meet southern right whales and great white sharks. Loggerhead, hawksbill, green, and leatherback turtles share this region with bluefin tuna and other fish. And species of sea squirts, molluscs, sea urchins, and sea stars are among the many invertebrates that live here and nowhere else.
Pollution, coastal development, overfishing, and long-line fishing (which causes high levels of bycatch, are threats to species found here.
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