Great Sandy Strait

No consideration was made for the impacts of climate change. It is unknown what impacts the combination of climate change and the proposed dam will have on the size and frequency of major flood events which are essential for the maintenance of the western side of Fraser Island (World Heritage Area) and the Great Sandy Strait.

I received an email from a dugong wanting to meet me. Believing it to be a hoax, of course, I made my way down to the jetty at Hervey Bay on the designated morning and found a dugong perched on a rock looking anxious. This interview is what unfolded:

Jason: Who are you and what do you want? Please excuse my surprise.

Dugong: My name is Gilbo. I’m a dugong. I live here in Hervey Bay and there are some urgent issues for discussions. I heard you might be interested in a chat regarding preservation of us and the Great Sandy Strait.

Jason: Well you’re right about that so go ahead and let’s have it. It’s not often we get a chance to interact personally with your lot.

Dugong: I’ve been hearing a lot about the imminent dam on the Mary River and I’m concerned that not many people know about our plight.

Jason: Tell me more...

Dugong: Well, 14 years ago we faced extinction here in the Bay because of the run-off from the Mary River’s upstream saltation during the cyclonic floods of that year. About 1, 000 of us died due to loss of our food source which is in fact the seagrass. That’s all we eat and when a suspended saltation occurs, sunlight can’t penetrate to the ocean floor and provide the necessary chlorophyll to sustain the seagrass nutrient balance. It then dies off and we are without food. As you would expect we are extremely sensitive about threats that might be a repeat of the past. There are about 2,000 of us living here in the Bay. Seagrass is also a very important part of the local ecology and without it, all sorts of other marine species suffer as well (www.worldseagrass.org). Hervey Bay is supposed to be protected under at least two International Law Covenants and several National Rare and Endangered Species and Biodiversity Acts and (Gilbo chuckles) the new Marine Park … www.fido,org.au (see Moonbi 109 page 3).

Jason: Why will the Dam be a threat to the seagrass?

Dugong: With the damming of this river, there are a number of identifiable problems with the downstream part of the river not the least of which will be a 20% reduction rate in water flow and total drying in sections for at least six months of a year. The nutrient and freshwater flow to the seagrass will be impacted. There are vital issues with sediment dislodgement, bank alteration, loss of shallow water rapids and habitat pools, and the drying of dissolved oxygen pools for you-know-who …

Jason: Yeah who?

Dugong: My mates, Wheezer, the Lung Fish, and Coddy, the Mary River Cod, of course. Not only that but their food source will be compromised as well. You see I’m not only thinking of myself here. Also there’s our other mate Tess, the Mary Turtle. She’ll find loss of sandy banks as a major problem for laying eggs if you get my ‘drift’. The impact on the riparian zones will be immense as will the loss of downstream habitat woody debris—the list just goes on and on. What about the Cascade Tree Frog and the Giant Barred Frog? … All endangered!

So you see, as it stands, with the fresh water emptying into the Bay, there is a delicate balance in oceanic saline solutions and lots of additional subtle ecological processes that ensure the survival of seagrass, bank/silt stabilisation and hence other fresh water and marine microbiology. When you look at it more deeply seagrass is like a keystone—you take out the keystone in a stone arch and ‘bang’ - see what happens?!

Jason: Do you think the Dam will go ahead?

Dugong: That will depend on the groundswell of public education and motivation properly placed where it can be most effective. It’s a necessary process for people to be exchanging info in the local rags, but governments are notorious for politicising environmental issues and riding roughshod over legislation that protects the likes of us. Per capita, Australia is the worst country in the world for volume of habitat destruction.

So in order to be effective and stop this dam, new and creative approaches are necessary to drive the message home so that the will of the people can be responsibly enforced. Look what happened at the Franklin River 25 years ago. People power was the bottom-line-requirement. The Night Cap Rainforest Action in the northern rivers of NSW was another success story of ‘people power’ saving a rainforest. From the Nightcap’s successful action, Rainforest Action Groups or ‘RAGS’ as they were called, spread like wildfire across the Earth focusing on the rainforest protection issues. There is a lot happening to be positive about. On a local level The Mary River Catchment Coordinating Committee has won many awards for its initiative in protecting the Mary. By the way did you know that the Paradise Dam has been touted as one of the five worst dams by the United Nations yet it’s our government’s model of success. (Gilbo’s eyes show their whites as his eyes roll). I rest my case!

Jason: What do you mean, “People power is the ‘bottom line requirement’”?

Dugong: I mean this is only a beginning. Interestingly, that recent protest in Brisbane about the dam and the meeting with Bob Brown at Kandanga, took the fight a little further, establishing unprecedented unity for this area, but there’s still an enormous amount of work to do. There needs to be a turn around of what amounts to a shift in the South East QLD’s ‘paradigm of water decadence’. Reduce, reduce, reduce! … Why should 900 properties be paying for others’ lack of conservation? This is arrogance in its highest degree.

Jason: So what ‘simple ideas’ do you have then to make a ‘paradigm shift’ occur?

Dugong: Well for a start, you are a culture have to identify what your inherent values are that sustain you, and how you collectively protect that and conserve resources. Your species has come a long way in understanding this but what you don’t have in place is enough legal clout to stop governments from damaging biodiversity. Why, because mostly the dollar rules. The ‘paradigm’ is still locked into outdated economic growth imperatives without consideration of holistic environmental and social awareness. The concept of ‘Thinking Globally and Acting Locally’ is now more important than ever and is thankfully happening already in many areas around the world. (Gilbo was getting animated and assertive at this point.)

Look at how global warming is destroying the Great Barrier Reef as we speak. Twenty years they say, before it’s dead. You still don’t collectively regard biodiversity as a necessity for survival. Look at the rapid loss of equatorial rainforests, the ‘lungs of the planet’. Now you’re over-consuming fossil fuels thereby depleting and overheating the biomass that keeps the world’s atmosphere in balance. See Al Gore’s film … (Gilbo held up a DVD and waved it a bit). On a local level the state government is modelled on ‘old’ paradigms that still allow –eco-shortcuts to push through hollow development. It is as a ‘pseudo-sign’ of healthy culture to placate unimpeded population expansion with carte blanche drain on resources.

Jason: Just bringing it back to you guys here, what else would you like to see happen to protect the seagrass and stop the dam?

Dugong:

1. People-power as a united voice has more weight than can be imagined. Get together, get educated about the issues such as water and be creatively united. As I said to you … ask yourself … What do you want?

2. Bring in the international groups that already have major influence such as the UNESCO which oversee WORLD HERITAGE AREAS—www.whc.unesco.org/ en/list/630—and the RAMSAR WETLAND CONVENTION, which oversees Hervey Bay. We need collective deputations that can bring the issue to the world stage and embarrass the governments big time. The people need to take control because a lot of the dominant pollies are letting us all down.

3. Get active and NEVER give up .... 20,000 unified people are not going to

take it lying down now are they?

Jason: Well it’s been most informative. So what’ll you do now?

Dugong: Keep an eye on you guys of course but right now it must be time to eat some seagrass. I’ll see you later, we’ll have another update very soon. I’ll call you …

Jason: But wait … He’s gone—slipped away without a splash!! Off into his enchanted marine wonderland of sparkling clear water. But there is a dark, warning cloud on the horizon and I felt I had just been goaded by an extraordinary fish …