Today I spent several hours looking at the website for the APVMA - thats the Commonweath body that regulates the use of pesticides. They have a recent report out on the impact of diuron on different organisms, including mangroves. APVMA also think the studies with mangroves are very muddled and inconclusive. I am now looking into the studies with seagrass and coral too. I am wondering what to believe. As Peter says, what is urgently needed is a group of independent scientists who are not paid just to find problems so they can keep their jobs. I grew up on a farm and know how important some chemicals are to agriculture. Nobody wants to have pesticides in our waterways, but we also need to know what are the real problems.

Jennifer you are an amazing Lady. You have real courage to stand where you are in UQ and say it the way it truly is.
The link following leads to enough evidence of real substance to indicate unprecedented sewage nutrient pollution proliferating algae is smothering seagrass while micro algae is even warming ocean water.
Scroll down especially to the link that mentions Bering Strait, see the algae associated with photosynthetic warmth streaming into the Arctic Ocean where ice is reportedly melting more than normal.
http://justgroundsonline.com/forum/topics/why-blame-farmers-and-co2
P.S.
I know I have posted this link before but now more notice may be taken about bona fide evidence of substance, now it is known other findings are a litany of false claims.

Sunscreen washed off tourists bodies does way more damage to the reef than farm run-off.
Just go out to where the tourist boats regularly tie up & you'll see nothing but sediment & dead coral. You always get told you should have been here yesterday when the see the disappointed faces.
A lot of hype about something you'll never get to see. I dived out of Cairns in the early 70's & found pristine reefs around Arlington & Pixie reefs & farmers used much stronger pesticides then. Now it's the other way round.

Don't forget the carbonic acid killing the GBR, litany of CO2 emissions propaganda.

It's amazing how criticism of one study on mangroves turns into a 'litany' of false claims (by inference just about all the research, it seems) on the Great Barrier Reef.

There is an organisation of disinterested scientists who do review the research, as Noosagirl has mentioned: the APVMA.

And lo and behold! It just so happens they doing a review on Diuron at the moment, what a coincidence. The submissions have been open for this review for years, but they are now closed. It doesn't look like Jennifer is referenced in the revised environment report:

http://www.apvma.gov.au/products/review/docs/diuron_environment.pdf

The review period was open since 2005 Jennifer, dragged your feet didn't you? What happened? Are now going to town on these guys because you didn't like the way it looked like it was going? Why couldn't you review these guys work or make a submission to the APVMA earlier?

Bugsy, you're always criticising papers because they're not peer reviewed. Now you get a peer reviewed paper and you insist it's not good enough because the author should have just made a non-peer reviewed submission to a government inquiry. Can you work out what your real position is and get back to us?

Noosagirl, would you mind posting links to the APVMA papers, and maybe some extracts? Sounds interesting, but helps for a discussion here to have more specific references.