Alice Roberts and Jacquie Mackay ABC Net 4 Nov 11;
Concerns over the impacts of dredging on marine life in Gladstone have been raised by locals and environmental groups recently.
Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority protected species expert Dr Mark Read addressed a national forum on ways industry are already working to manage human related impacts on turtles and dugongs.
He says this year they've recorded over 1200 turtle strandings along the Queensland coast.
"Whilst the level of marine strandings this year has obviously been alarming and disturbing, in terms of the overall population, we're not likely to have a long term impact and so the population is not going to be threatened," he says.
"However the story for dugongs is probably a little bit different because the population of dugongs along what we call the urban coast, which is from Cooktown down to the New South Wales border, that population is experiencing a number of threats.
"It has had some significant declines so any additional stresses like what we're seeing at the moment is actually going to be, in many ways, compromising that population over time."
So can populations of turtles and dugongs recover from this?
"One of the inherent challenges with turtles and dugongs is that their biology in many ways doesn't allow them to engage in or to have rapid population recoveries, especially dugongs," says Dr Read.
"So yes they can recover but we need to be thinking long term strategies if we're going to see numbers come back to anything that we've had in the past."
So what impacts are we seeing?
"The main impacts have essentially been from Cairns, south," he says.
"We've had significant impacts from the wet season and of course from tropical cyclone Yasi so we've seen a degradation and a decline of seagrass beds.
"Now if you're a dugong that relies almost exclusively on seagrass beds or a green turtle that uses that as a big part of your diet, that's really going to impact on you."
He says as a result they've seen the highest record of turtle strandings since the program started in 1996.
"We're just starting to see some recovery in seagrass beds in some areas whereas in others we're not seeing any recovery at all," says Dr Read.
"In many ways the long term prognosis is thinking about the focus on the habitat that supports these animals and making sure we can minimise the threats."
He says DEEDI and the Department of Resource Management is monitoring the situation in Gladstone.
He says they're keeping track of strandings and working closely with the Ports Corporation to ensure that industry and marine life can live alongside each other.
"We receive advice from DERM about what is happening there and certainly at this stage, the difficult thing is that there's really no data that links what's happening to the turtles and dugongs to the dredging," he says.
He says while there's little we can do about natural events affecting turtle and dugong numbers, we can help in other ways.
"Various government agencies have been working with commercial fishers and the Queensland Seafood Industry Association to minimise the potential impact of inshore netting on turtles and dugongs," says Dr Read.
"It's highlighting things like go slow areas where you can minimise the potential for hitting a dugong or a turtle.
"So the slogan we've talked about is 'go slow for those below'.
"It's about other groups like traditional owners making the decision to voluntarily cease traditional hunting in recognition that the animals that they have a connection to, are at this particular point doing it pretty tough.
"The other things is the really big programs like the reef water quality protection plan to minimise the outflow of sediments and nutrients from the land into the Great Barrier Reef which is going to give the seagrasses the best possible chance of recovery."
