Scientists are warning the wildlife impacts of a marine heatwave that has driven a catastrophic algal bloom off South Australia are likely to be equivalent to those from the black summer bushfires, and demand a similar response from governments.
Experts from five Australian universities say “one of the worst marine disasters in living memory” requires rapid investigation by federal and state governments to identify any at-risk species and fund emergency interventions if necessary.
In a report by the Biodiversity Council, an independent expert group founded by 11 universities, the scientists called on governments to commit to seven actions to respond to the “foreseeable and even predicted” event and to prepare for “an increasingly dangerous and unstable future”.
As expected, the federal Senate on Wednesday nightestablished an inquiry into the disaster that has killed thousands of marine animals off SA. The Coalition senator Anne Ruston earlier accused the federal and SA governments of being too slow to act on the “significant environmental issue”, “allowing it to massively escalate into a serious ecological disaster”.
While she welcomed this week’s assistance packages – with federal and state governments each announcing $14m – she said it seemed “manifestly inadequate to deal with the impact on the affected communities”.
“It fails to recognise the magnitude of the response needed to both address the problem and deal with the clean-up,” the senator for SA said.
“At a national level this marine heatwave is likely to have an equivalent impact on wildlife as the black summer bushfires, once we consider not just this harmful algal bloom, but also the extensive coral bleaching and mortality on both east and west coasts,” said Prof Gretta Pecl, a Biodiversity Council member from the University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies.
She noted that governments had previously “mobilised significant funds” for natural disasters, “as we saw with the $2bn National Bushfire Recovery Fund, which included over $200m for wildlife recovery measures”.
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The federal MP for the SA seat of Mayo, Rebekha Sharkie, said the federal government needed to commit more.
“With respect, if this was happening at Bondi beach, for example, I’m sure we’d be seeing a much larger slice of commonwealth funding,” she said, echoing recent comments from the Greens senator for SA Sarah Hanson-Young.
“Although there’s nothing we can do to stop the current bloom, we need additional investment for monitoring and research..”
Actions called for by the Biodiversity Council include an immediate investment of at least $10m to start research into the impact of the algal bloom, establishment of a long-term monitoring program of southern reefs – modelled on the $40m 10-year Great Barrier Reef monitoring program – and rapid work to investigate at-risk species, including giant cuttlefish, which have a mass winter breeding event off Whyalla.
The council said the government assistance package was a “welcome start” but was likely insufficient to support and compensate affected communities and businesses and address “immediate and longer term biodiversity needs”.
Pecl said the impact of the event would “massively exceed the actual boundaries of the physical bloom itself”, with cascading consequences for other Australian regions because of the connectivity of oceans and their food webs.
“This harmful algal bloom is just one of the major consequences of the marine heatwave ringing Australia, which has also caused extensive coral bleaching on both east and west coasts with high rates of coral mortality,” she said.
The report said the crisis was a “human-mediated disaster” enabled by the extended marine heatwave and likely fed by a large pulse of nutrient-rich flood water and coastal upwelling.
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Scientists said the event had likely been exacerbated by the “widespread loss of marine ecosystems that once provided natural water filtering and resilience against natural as well as human threats”.
They called on governments to accelerate Australia’s decarbonisation efforts, saying minimising ocean warming was “the most important step in preventing harmful algal blooms” along all Australian coastlines.
The report proposed further actions including more work to identify and reduce sources of nutrient and dissolved carbon pollution and restoration and protection of marine ecosystems.
A federal government spokesperson said the health and resilience of Australia’s oceans were a priority and the government was “deeply concerned by the widespread marine species mortalities caused by this extreme event”.
“The Albanese Government will continue to work constructively with the South Australian Government when it comes to the devastating SA algal bloom,” they said.
“That’s why we have contributed half of the $28m funding package with the South Australian government to support science and research to boost resilience and planning, industry support and clean up efforts.”
The Biodiversity Council director, James Trezise, said: “Alongside rapidly reducing emissions, Australia needs to be better prepared for environmental disasters such as this.
“We should all accept that this is likely to just be the tip of the iceberg for what our future looks like with unmitigated climate change and rapid biodiversity loss,” he said.
The Senate inquiry is expected to hand down its report in late October.
