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The Forum > Article Comments > Joyce's glib assessment that 'accidents will happen' not good enough for Reef > Comments

Joyce's glib assessment that 'accidents will happen' not good enough for Reef : Comments

By Basha Stasak, published 29/9/2016

The report finds that at present our laws literally grant polluters a 'licence to kill' our reef and leave us and future generations with the mess and the clean-up bill.

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Australian Conservation Foundation attention to coral damage on the Great Barrier Reef should be on point sources of sewage and land use nutrient pollution, instead of on the narrow keel of a ship scratching the bottom of the GBR lagoon.

The ACF and Greens Party for some political reason, blatantly ignore southern city and town sewage nutrient waste being dumped daily and transported NORTH within the Australian east coast sediment dispersal system.
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2112/08-1120.1

Times have changed in the past 15-20 years and so has health of coral worldwide.
Live coral exists amongst dead coral.
It's not as though whole coral reef is dead, though some big areas are dead or severely damaged.
Point is, dead coral is being almost immediately covered with algae and that algae remains and has to be fed in order to remain.

Nutrient overload pollution is the problem, not heat, not acid, not silt.
Heat or 'carbonic' acid (LOL) would devastate whole reef.
Silt does not reach the actual GBR because silt settles before spreading far offshore where the GBR is located.

Apart from upwellings, nutrient pollution is travelling in surface waters like rain clouds travel at suited altitude in the sky.
Sometimes a water surface nutrient cloud is overloaded with nutrient and invasive algae or algae blooms occur, whereas a cloud in the sky sometimes produces rain that sometimes results in too much water for crops - e.g. involving fungus or soil eroding flood.

I respect all people who have experience in ocean waters but there is need to take a fresh look at what is actually what has happened in recent years and what is continuing to happening now, and is worsening.

My assessment of the article on this thread is that money collecting 'conservation' business interests are again attacking political parties instead of addressing the real cause of waterway coral and ocean damage.

I suggest note the situation worldwide and consider algae instead of marketing and emissions spin.
Don't wait for ABC government funded cronies to report news of widespread algae in Australia or elsewhere:

http://www.surfermag.com/blogs/agents-of-change/secrets-of-the-ooze/#zdZqIt0MOFvHrc3R.97

and:
http://www.ecowatch.com/algae-blooms-climate-change-2017383600.html
Posted by JF Aus, Friday, 30 September 2016 9:05:22 AM
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Some of that is getting to be a bit of ancient history JF AUS.

Even as a kid in the late 50s I could see the difference between the nutrient affected western side of Magnetic Island, just off Townsville, & the unaffected eastern side, a little further off shore. Today the inshore western areas are much improved, despite Townsville's rapid growth. We are doing something right with sewerage.

In the early 70s, places like the northern area of Cid Harbour, on the western side of Whitsunday Island had huge weed & algae growth, compared to the eastern side. This like Magnetic Is, was on once thriving coral reefs. I could have been wrong, but I was just green enough to blame this on the sugar farmers of Proserpine, & their fertiliser run off.

Today fertiliser is so expensive that farmers have developed techniques to minimise its use, & feed only their crop. Perhaps this is why that Cid Harbour area has much less weed growth. Of course it could be just a natural cycle, too long for a simple human to see in it's entirety, but I think it is to some extent, us cleaning up our act.

I very much doubt that with our south going east coast current, that nutrients from Sydney & Brisbane ever get to the Reef. Hobart is more likely destination, but I guess that is no reason not to clean up our cities effluent.
Posted by Hasbeen, Friday, 30 September 2016 12:35:30 PM
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More Henny Penny antics from the ACF to get their CEO's and middle management to pay off their BMW's and Audi's no doubt. A known fact that most donations sent to 'aid/conservation/save the gay whales etc organisations' are gobbled up in administration fees and paying advertisers, hangers on. If the $$$ actually went on "saving the reef" then I might believe something was really being done to save it.

Hasbeen & Sparkyq...dead right, I went back recently to dive on a channel (blasted by RAN divers in 1970) through an outer reef to allow copra boats access to a small island off Manus Island where I lived and dived as a nipper. No surprises - the reef had grown back to a point where it takes several weeks every year for the locals picking away at it to maintain the channel opening.

The Parramatta River in the 1950's to 1970's was a moving cesspit, offal floating down stream from the abattoirs at Homebush, the dioxin residues from Union Carbide at Rhodes and other similar plants around Clyde, notably the oil refinery. All of which meant a very polluted waterway. I rowed these waters in my high school days (early to mid 1970's) and remember the smell. Today you would still probably be risking it by eating fish caught from there, but there is a vast improvement in the species and variety of fish, crustacean, bird and animal life along those same waterways.

Just like Joycey's mate Tony Abscess whose famous quote: "Sheet happens..." we can only deduce that to elect the Liberal/Country/National into government we can expect a series of accidents/happenings, not only on the Reef, but anywhere else they may happen to roam ?
Posted by Albie Manton in Darwin, Friday, 30 September 2016 1:25:04 PM
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Hasbeen,

Yes the ancient history. LOL.
An ex pearl diver mate referring to present day condition of the GBR, said to me a few years ago, "we were lucky to see it as it was".

Yes there appears to have been a lot of improvement.
No longer are waters brown with sewage.
And I think soap manufacturers have modified formula.

These days the sewage arrives at 'treatment' plants and the pipe opens onto a curved slightly downhill concrete ramp that rolls off lumps.
Undigested tomato seeds and the occasional diamond ring are filtered from the liquid.

Sewage 'treatment' in the most modern country in the world provides example of lack of sewage nutrient reduction. The US is onto it but Australia has the subject suppressed and gagged.
http://www.circleofblue.org/2016/water-quality/epa-announces-national-wastewater-nutrient-pollution-census/

Most of the brown has been taken out of some sewage but not enough nutrient, or any at all at most 'treatment' works.

Less weed or seagrass growth in the Cid Harbour - Whitsunday region, is according to evidence of substance, directly linked to northerly flow of nutrient from southern cities and towns on Australia's east coast.

People not knowing about direction of that streaming and impacting alongshore current flow is evidence of suppression and gagging.

The southerly flowing OFFSHORE current that reaches Tasmania is the East Australian Current.

The NORTHERLY flowing current transporting city and town sewage nutrient pollution northwards is the alongshore or longshore current that is driven northwards AGAINST the coast by prevailing S and SE winds.

I once asked CSIRO why that alongshore did not have a name and they replied it's a current too insignificant to be named.
Well, I have evidence of substance, for example indicating the Australian east coast alongshore current is the current that once transported natural nutrient that naturally fed and shaped the significant Great Barrier Reef.
That’s why the Swains Reef to the south is big with the overall GBR becoming smaller as it extends northwards.
Abundant natural and fresh nutrient flowed from the south.

Continued………
Posted by JF Aus, Sunday, 2 October 2016 8:49:07 AM
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Cont’d……

Heavy sand and suspended solid matter and dissolved nutrient flows northwards in alongshore current that also transports the sand that sometimes blocks coastal river entrances.

An estimated 500 cubic metres of sand washes north past the Gold Coast each year.

Tweed River and Gold Coast seaway sand pumps are situated on southern sides to pump sand northwards.

Obviously if a coastal current transports heavy sand it can transport lighter suspended matter, including fresher water that tends toward the surface.

Prevailing winds drive surface water against the coast.
Importantly, nutrient is bonded to the fresher water until taken up.

At northern Fraser Island the heavy sand spills over the Continental Shelf but the fresher surface water continues nor-nor westward into GBR lagoon waters.

Depending on tides and wind some nutrient is drawn or pushed into estuaries and bays and taken up by algae and marine plants. Some nutrient must reach Cape York.

During 2000 Gold Coast dredging resuspended nutrient and Lyngbya cyanobacteria seed was transported northwards and was later identified causing damage in inshore waters of the Whitsundays.
An EPA manager with a UQ scientist collected samples from me at the Gold Coast.
The samples came from the Broadwater seabed and when tested were found to contain elevated levels of nutrient. I think they also contained ancient Lyngbya seed or spore.
And that again raises another issue.

If anyone on this OLO site has contact with human health authority of integrity then please pass this warning in relation to asthma and food allergy.
Lyngbya majuscula algae is a toxic cyanobacteria that travels with sand in Australian east coast northerly flowing alongshore current.
Cyanobacteria has
Prevailing winds sweep some of that sand high enough to build Moreton Island.
I think neuro impact linked cyanobacteria algae blows onto beaches with that sand, the Lyngby dries and must become airborne, and there are peanut farms sometimes downwind from Moreton Island.

There is need in many more ways than one to manage nutrient pollution proliferating algae in oceans and waterways of this planet.

Reverse glib or incorrect assessment.

John C Fairfax.
Posted by JF Aus, Sunday, 2 October 2016 8:56:25 AM
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Spent a lot of time on the Queensland & NSW coasts have you JF Aus.

I have, both in Sydney/Brisbane & Brisbane/Gladstone races. I have also done a couple of dozen personal trips from Sydney under sail, & run tourist boats on the Queensland coast for some years.

Just like the global warming scam, the garbage put our by academics is all computer generated, with no basis in facts.

Queensland inshore flow is all tide generated down to Gladstone.

NSW the top 10 fathoms, 60Ft is predominately south, about 90% of the time, with occasional reverses. Down around 20 fathoms you get a counter current north going some of the time, but not that often. This is full salt water, & not mixed with the lighter fresh water from sewerage outfalls. This lower flow carries the sand north, & is what formed Fraser Island.

Try sailing north & south from Sydney heads, the smell will tell you which way the stuff from those outfalls is going. You only have to look at the cray pots marker buoy ropes at most headlands to see what the upper level of current is doing.

Sir James Hardy, when briefing a group of sailors before the start of a Sydney/Brisbane told them to stay right in shore in the bays, to get out of the south flowing current. When asked how close they had to be he said, "If you can't hear the dogs barking, you're too far off".

You could even ask that old bloke, Captain James Cook. He spent 3 days hard sailing just to get past cape Three Points, at the northern side of Broken Bay, such was the south going current, when he cruised these waters in 1770.
Posted by Hasbeen, Sunday, 2 October 2016 12:39:37 PM
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