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ourgreatsandy.com Celebrating and Defending the Great Sandy Strait
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Help Save Fraser Island’s Unique Marine Environment! |
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Sediments from the Mary have been associated with important seagrass beds near the Island’s Wanggoolba Creek, south of Kingfisher Bay. They also provide a kind of buffer for Fraser, protecting its fragile coastline from erosion.
Clumps of Water Hyacinth – also flushed out of the Mary during floods – are often found washed up on beaches along Fraser’s coast and around Hervey Bay, clearly showing how far-reaching the influence of the Mary really is. |
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Shifting plumes of sediment are clearly visible from the air. |
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Over thousands of years the Mary River has helped create and sustain a very special part of Fraser Island’s unique marine environment. In addition to freshwater flows from the Island itself, the Mary has nurtured marine ecosystems along the western fringes of the World Heritage Area, and supported a great diversity of life in the process.
During times of heavy flows large plumes of suspended sediments and nutrients are flushed from the river, and these can travel great distances across the Strait, sustaining its vast system of shifting sand banks and mangrove forests and the marine life that depend on them, all the way to the shores of Fraser. |
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Website created by Elisabeth Berry for 2Berries Communications. Copyright © 2009 ourgreatsandy.com. All rights reserved. |
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PROPOSED MARY RIVER DAM
Impacts On The Great Sandy …
About The Great Sandy …
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Sediment Plumes & Fraser Island |
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Water Hyacinth washed ashore in Urangan, Hervey Bay |
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The Sandy Strait is also home to extensive mangrove forests providing valuable habitat for numerous animal species and acts as important nurseries for fish and crustaceans. Mangroves also act as giant filters, removing up to 70% of sediment thereby maintaining coastal water quality.
The greatest threat that mangrove forests now face is sea level rise and the coastal erosion that it produces. The thick tangle of mangrove roots are responsible for capturing sediment and thereby building and maintaining the mud banks that they grow on. The damming of rivers deprives estuaries of the natural fluvial input of sediment and decreases the likelihood that mangroves can maintain the elevation of the mud banks, resulting in erosion and mangrove destruction or landward migration.
To help protect our precious marine ecosystems we need to enable them to have a fighting chance by not interfering with their natural processes. Removing sediment from the out flow of the Mary River will reduce the Sandy Strait’s ability to resist erosion, which in turn will have disastrous results for our ecosystems and coastal economies.
References
Brown, A. C., & McLachlan, A. (2002). Sandy shore ecosystems and the threats facing them: some predictions for the year 2025. Environmental Conservation, 29(1), 62-77.
Ellison, J. C., & Stoddart, D. R. (1991). Mangrove Ecosystem Collapse During Predicted Sea-Level Rise - Holocene Analogs and Implications. Journal of Coastal Research, 7(1), 151-165.
Gilman, E., Ellison, J., & Coleman, R. (2007). Assessment of mangrove response to projected relative sea-level rise and recent historical reconstruction of shoreline position. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 124(1-3), 105-130.
Krauss, K. W., Allen, J. A., & Cahoon, D. R. (2003). Differential rates of vertical accretion and elevation change among aerial root types in Micronesian mangrove forests. Estuarine Coastal and Shelf Science, 56(2), 251-259. |
