Most ecosystem studies are short term and restricted to a single site, making it difficult to extend the conclusions made to temporally or spatially different circumstances. In other words, we need longer-term experiments undertaken simultaneously at a variety of sites. Progressive long-term degradation due to compounded human impacts, including direct exploitation, pollution, bycatch, disturbance, habitat degradation, holiday home and resort development, etc. Lack of sufficient unimpacted benchmark sites reduces awareness of this threat. South Africa has a proud history of research on rocky shore ecology, dating back to the pioneering studies of Stephenson and co-workers.
Capacity is thus good in relation to other comparable, and certainly other African countries.
If they leave the entire centre will collapse or change fields. There is little opportunity to support these students and their input, both intellectual and in terms of tasks accomplished, is thus lost. There is no doubt that we need to develop management policies that are predictive at an ecosystem, rather than a species level. It is abundantly clear from case studies, such as the overexploitation in the former Transkei, that ecosystem impacts are profound, but few predictive experiments have been carried out. Another management concern is the paucity of long-term monitoring studies to determine the scale of natural spatial and temporal variability.