Archive: 1999

Spotlight on Bay Seagrass

Anglers urged to give mud-flat markers wide berth

The Chronicle, Tuesday, August 1999, page 5

SMALL white floats and strange yelldw tags appearing on mud flats from Burrum Heads to Tin Can Bay have nothing to do with crab pots. Instead these markers are part of a project to monitor the health of the Fraser Coast's marine environment. The floats, connected to tagged star pickets, mark out permanent sites for monitoring seagrass beds.

The sites have been set up under a project between the community-based Hervey Bay Dugong and Seagrass Monitoring Program, the Department of- Primary Industries (DPI), the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (QPWS) and the federal government's Coast and Clean Seas program.

Project leader Len McKenzie,a senior research scientist with the DPI's seagrass ecology group, said the underwater florawas an important indicator of the health of the marine environment. By setting up permanent sites,seagrass beds could be examined every three to six months and any changes noted."This becomes like an early alert system," Mr McKenzie said. Comparing sites around the area would also help identify if problems were small scale or affected the entice region.

Hervey Bay was chosen for the project mainly because of the enthusiasm of the community based monitoring. group, Mr McKenzie said. Its members had been trained to do the on going checks. Anglers or beachgoers who came across the tagged areas were asked to leave them undisturbed.

Picture: Helping DPI researcher Len McKenzie (right) set up the seagrass sites at Toogoom beach this week were volunteers including (from the left) Marjorie Hanson,Wendy Jones and Maree Cliff. Inset: The float and tag which mark each site

Seagrass Watch

Earth Beat, Saturday, August 7th 1999

Summary:

Seagrass Watch: a scheme on the Queensland coast to protect the only flowering plants in the sea.

Details or Transcript:

Alexandra de Blas: Australia is one of the most sea grass rich countries in the world, and Queensland has more than its fair share. It's home to 16 different kinds of sea grass, which is a quarter of the world's known species. So it's fitting that Australia's first community-based sea grass monitoring program is based in that State.

It's called Sea Grass Watch, and it brings scientific know-how to communities on the ground. But as I can attest, sea grass monitoring isn't all plain sailing.

SEA SOUNDS

Alexandra de Blas: Oh, oh, oh. Oh dear. We're in the sea grass meadows in front of Cairns Harbour and we're looking at sea grasses, and I've just sunk right down deep into the mud! Now Warren, I'll just climb out of the mud here to begin with.

RAUCOUS LAUGHTER ALL ROUND

Warren Lee Long: Right, this is the place to be. Let's get on this patch of sea grass.

Alexandra de Blas: OK. We're in the sea grass meadows just in front of Cairns Harbour and we've just sunk knee deep, actually above the knees, into the mud here, which wasn't what we'd planned. I'm with Warren Lee Long, and Chantal Roder, and they're both biologists with the Queensland Department of Primary Industries, and they're managing a community-based sea grass monitoring program.

Warren, tell me about the sea grasses here in Cairns Harbour, and what's special about them.

Warren Lee Long: Well it's interesting that, we've got such a healthy looking sea grass meadow of zostera plants mostly, so close to a fairly large urban centre, and it's some of the most productive sea grasses we've found so far on the East Queensland coast in fisheries production, and it's a very famous mud flat for bird watchers who come to Cairns. So it's an interesting sea grass meadow from that perspective, and it's showing us that sea grasses in at least Queensland, do fairly well with a little bit of human pressure nearby. But we are a little concerned that we don't know whether we are tipping those sea grasses over the edge, or very close to doing that in some locations.

Alexandra de Blas: And what exactly is a sea grass?

Warren Lee Long: Sea grasses are actually flowering plants that are evolved or descended from lilies in the family Potamogetonacea and Hydrocharitacea and they've adapted to a purely marine environment, and being flowering plants, they're sexual reproduction parts also have to adapt to fully submersed situations. So they're pollinating under water as well, and there, they don't need to have vectors to pollinate them, they're relying on the water currents to take the pollen across to the female flowers.

Alexandra de Blas: Last year you started the Sea Grass Watch program. Chantal, it was the communities that came to you. Why were communities concerned about sea grasses, what led them to that.

Chantal Roder: That's right. Sea grasses in Queensland have got a heightened media profile in the last few years. In Hervey Bay there was a large scale loss of sea grass which led to the death of many dugong in the area. Also fisheries productivity in the Hervey Bay area declined, which was of concern to local commercial and recreational fishers. So that profile in Hervey Bay, the Port Hinchinbrook development which has also been quite controversial, because of these sort of issues, community groups have wanted to become involved in the stewardship of their own coastal sea grass resources.

Alexandra de Blas: You've been training the communities; what do you teach them to do?

Chantal Roder: In Hervey Bay and the Whitsundays program so far, we've conducted two training sessions. We teach them to measure the extent of the sea grass areas within their locations, and we teach them to identify the sea grass species which are found in those locations.

Alexandra de Blas: What about the abundance of species and the distribution, how important is that?

Chantal Roder: That's very important. We need to know how much sea grass is out there. They measure the extent of sea grass meadows by running a transect or maybe walking out on a meadow and locating the edge with a gradal positioning system. So we teach them those sort of skills, recording the data in a data book on percent coverage of sea grass, known sea grass species.

Alexandra de Blas: How do they look for dugong activity?

Chantal Roder: They look out for dugong feeding trails which they're finding in the meadow. They look like just little bare squiggles within the sea grass meadow, so they're quite easy to distinguish. They might be about 20 centimetres wide, and in a zig-zag, random pattern.

Alexandra de Blas: Warren, what do you do with the monitoring information when the community groups give it to you?

Warren Lee Long: That's a bit of a challenge that we're facing at the moment, to make sure that the data that they bring back to us is put into a database quickly, and then on to a GIS, or geographic information system, so that we can output the data into maps and summary forms of the abundance and distribution, and get that data fed back to the community groups so they know that what they are doing is contributing to some output, and they can see the changes that are going on in graphic from, from what they've measured.

Alexandra de Blas: So getting a better understanding of how sea grass distribution changes with the seasons?

Warren Lee Long: With the seasons and with the years. And the community group's monitoring program may not come up with data that is as rigorous as what we could do as a scientific group, but they will be producing data and information which no-one else can get. And over a long period of time, they'll be producing information which will be putting us in a far better position to understand those seasonal and year to year changes.

Alexandra de Blas: How do you think the information and maps that you generate will be used by managers?

Warren Lee Long: It's interesting how quickly the managers have come on stream; in fact, this sea grass watch program really is a collaboration between us and the management agencies, and they are right up to speed at every step we take with this. So the results are feeding straight back into management programs at those sites where those issues that we identified boiling, and in fact it's going out at a rate that we can't keep up with, and we are facing a challenge in making sure that data does get put into those management systems.

Alexandra de Blas: Are you expecting the program to expand from here?

Warren Lee Long: Yes, we want it to expand, because the sea grass watch program is becoming the eyes across the whole coast that we can't really afford to be as a small research team. They're giving us the broader picture of those changes that we have in the back of our minds we want to explore, but can't do ourselves.

Alexandra de Blas: Well, we're all covered in mud up to our knees, and maybe we should make our way back to dry land.

SLOSHING

Warren Lee Long: The tide's coming in, we'd better race back.

Alexandra de Blas: Warren Lee Long and Chantal Roder, biologists from the Queensland Department of Primary Industries, and they were talking about their sea grass watch monitoring program.

Guests on this program:
Chantal Roder and Warren Lee Long
Department of Primary Industries
Northern Fisheries Centre
PO Box 5396
Portsmith QLD 4870
roderc@dpi.qld.gov.au

Reporter:
Alexandra de Blas

Source and article: Click Here

Concern over flood effect on dugong

The Hervey Bay City Independent, February 19, 1999 – page 7

COMMERCIAL fishermen have called on authorities to monitor the impact on dugong of the current flooding of the Mary River.

Mr Jim Thorburn, QCFO Urangan branch chairman, said that scientific research had shown floods in 1992 destroyed more than l000km2 of seagrass and devastated dugong numbers in Hervey Bay.

'A large number of Hervey Bay dugong died as a result of the 1992 flooding. At least 99 carcasses were recovered and all of them appeared to have died of starvation.

'The silt carried by flood waters killed huge areas of seagrass, which is the dugong's main food. As a result, there just wasn't enough food in Hervey Bay for most of the dugong.

'As many as 1000 dugong left the region or died," Mr Thorburn said. Mr Thorburn was also concerned that the flooding may increase the occurrence of a viral disease which has also be implicated in previous dugong deaths. Dugongs may be more susceptible to infection if their overall health is poor.

Fishermen reported sick dugong in Hervey Bay in previous years and it was confirmed by scientists that they were suffering from a potentially fatal viral disease.

Mr Thorburn said the QCFO Urangan branch has written to the Department of Environment and James Cook University, requesting them to monitor the effect of current floods on seagrass and consequently dugong numbers in the bay.

He added that seagrass was important for a range of marine life, including important commercial and recreational species. The loss of seagrass in 1992 had a significant impact on the capture of species such as prawns and school mackerel which rely on seagrass communities for food or habitat. So, floods like this can have a big impact on all sorts of marine life throughout the bay.

Eye on seagrass after floods

The Observer, Friday, February 19, 1999, page 1

RESEARCHERS are hopeful that floodwaters will not affect seagrass beds and the Bay's Dugong population.

After the last flood in 1992 more than a 1000 square kilometres of seagrass beds were wiped out and up to 100 dugong died from starvation
Scientists from the University of Queensland will be in Hervey Bay soon to see what is happening and how the flood waters affected seagrass growth.

They put four light meters in the the waters of the Great Sandy Strait to monitor the effects of the flood on water quality. The murky floodwater stops light from reaching the seagrass and smothers it. Researcher Ben Longstaff said the sensor units would be left out for six weeks.

“The information is automatically recorded and we download it on to computers every three weeks”he said. They record how much light reached the seagrass beds after this flood. “There should be less devastation this time because the Burrum River is not in flood dumping water into the bay as well as the Mary River’” Mr Comans said.

Ïn 1992 there were two cyclones dumping a lot of rain.” Mr Longstaff said the information from the light metres would be used to check research on how seagrass responded to flood.” Mr Comans said a survey of the seagrass beds completed in January showed that they had almost recovered to 1988 levels.

Scientists watch Bay seagrass after flood

The Chronicle, Wednesday, February 17, 1999 – Page 5

RESEARCHERS are hopeful that floodwaters will not affect seagrass beds and the Bay’s dugong population.

After the last flood in 1992 more than a 1000 square kilometres of seagrass beds were wiped out and up to 100 dugong died from starvation.
Scientists from the University of Queensland will be in Hervey Bay soon to see what is happening and how the flood waters affected seagrass growth.

They put four light meters in the waters of the Great Sandy Strait to monitor the effects of the flood on water quality.

The murky floodwater stops light from reaching the seagrass and smothers it. Researcher Ben Longstaff said the sensor units would be left out for six weeks. "The information is automatically recorded and we download it on to computers every three weeks," he said.
They record how much light reached the seagrass beds.

Hervey Bay resident Jerry Comans who is helping the researchers hoped there will be less damage to the seagrass beds after this flood.
"There should be less devastation this time because the Burrum River is not in flood dumping water into the bay as well as the Mary River," Mr Comans said.

"In 1992 there were two cyclones dumping a lot of rain." Mr Longstaff said the information from the light metres would be used to check research on how seagrass responded to flood." Mr Comans said a survey of the seagrass beds completed in January showed that they had almost recovered to 1988 levels.

Seagrass researcher Ben Longstaff with one of the light monitors that will be placed in Hervey Bay. The toothbrush is connected to a small motor and wipes mud and debris off the sensor on the top of the sensor to ensure an accurate reading.

Seagrass-Watch HQ monitors the quality of the information available on this web site and updates the information regularly. However, Seagrass-Watch HQ does not guarantee, and accepts no legal liability whatsoever arising from or connected to, the accuracy, reliability, currency or completeness of any material contained on this web site or on any linked site. Seagrass-Watch HQ recommends that users exercise their own skill and care with respect to their use of this web site and that users carefully evaluate the accuracy, currency, completeness and relevance of the material on the web site for their purposes. This web site is not a substitute for independent professional advice and users should obtain any appropriate professional advice relevant to their particular circumstances. The material on this web site may include the views or recommendations of third parties, which do not necessarily reflect the views of the Queensland Government, or indicate its commitment to a particular course of action.