Latest news with #KangarooIsland
Malay Mail
5 hours ago
- Climate
- Malay Mail
Toxic algae bloom lingers off Australia, killing marine life
SYDNEY, July 22 — A vast toxic algae bloom has sparked growing concern in Australia as it lingers off the south coast, killing hundreds of marine species and disrupting fisheries. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese unlocked federal funds this week to cope with the Karenia mikimotoi algae as it persists four months after first appearing. South Australia's government said it was holding an emergency meeting Tuesday to be briefed by scientists on the phenomenon. The algae, which damages the gills of fish and suffocates them, stretched across 4,400 square kilometres when it was first spotted in mid-March, according to the state government. While South Australian authorities hoped the bloom would disperse, it has instead spread across the region, the latest government update said. A marine heatwave in the area had 'largely abated', it said, but remained in some deeper waters. Beaches on wildlife-rich tourist draws such as Kangaroo Island, Yorke Peninsula and Fleurieu Peninsula have been littered with the marine carcasses of sharks, rays, crabs and octopuses. 'It's hard to overstate the extreme severity of the algal-bloom environmental crisis in South Australia,' said marine ecologist Adriana Verges from University of New South Wales. 'We are talking about extensive mortality of nearly 500 different marine species, including key habitat-forming sponges and other invertebrates, as well as fish. It's completely devastating.' 'Red flashing warning' Karenia mikimotoi has been detected around the world, including in waters off Japan, Norway, the United States and China, since the 1930s and disrupted local tourism and fishery industries, causing millions of dollars worth of damage. Ian Mitchell, who manages a fish market in Adelaide, said some people had not caught anything since April. 'It's the worst I've ever seen it,' he told national broadcaster ABC. 'I'm speaking to fishermen on a daily basis, and I've got fishermen in tears on the phone.' The federal government announced on Monday A$14 million (RM38.6 million) in financial assistance to impacted fisheries, clean-up efforts and research into preparedness. The prime minister said a 'whole range of issues' had led to the event, including nutrient-rich floodwater runoff and above-average ocean temperatures. Historically fishing and aquaculture industries can take years to recover from these algae blooms, said Australian Marine Conservation Society chief executive Paul Gamblin. 'It's an enormous red flashing warning that climate change has arrived off Australia and it is having enormous impacts,' he told AFP. South Australia has not previously experienced a toxic algae bloom of this scale or duration. Local authorities have urged beachgoers to avoid swimming in water that is discoloured or foamy, warning that it can irritate the skin and affect breathing. Climate change has led to an increase in the frequency and duration of marine heatwaves across Australia, which significantly affects marine ecosystems. — AFP
ABC News
16 hours ago
- General
- ABC News
Where should the funding to deal with SA's toxic algal bloom be spent?
The federal government has pledged $14 million to assist South Australia as it grapples with a toxic algal bloom outbreak. But just how far will that funding go and where should it be allocated? Well that depends on who you speak to. The bloom was first spotted in March and has resulted in dead marine life washing up on the state's shores, while also disrupting a number of industries, including fishing, aquaculture and tourism operators. The South Australian government is expected to announce further funding today, but one mayor says what's already been pledged is just "a drop in the ocean". Scientists and local and state governments all agree that some of the funding will need to be spend on relief measures for those in industries affected by the bloom. Kangaroo Island Mayor Michael Pengilly said businesses along Kangaroo Island's coastline have been severely impacted by the bloom. "Some of the things that we have to look at here are stabilising the impact on those affected, whether they be fishermen or work in the abalone industry, the tourism industry, the charter industry," Mr Pengilly told ABC Radio Adelaide. "We may have to look at job creation projects, also mental health support. A lot of these thing happened after the [2019] fires and we've got a bit of a history of dealing with disasters. "Our major employer at the abalone farm has about 30 people, which doesn't seem like many people in the city, but it's a big employer over here. "They're shut down at the moment, the oyster industry is shut down here, Yorke Peninsula, Port Lincoln. Now we have the Port Wakefield area is now being impacted, the fishery out there." Mr Pengilly said he would be meeting with state Environment Minister Susan Close today. While he applauded her for her efforts at supporting those affected by the bloom, he said the government overall has been slow to respond. "The state government holistically has been slow to do anything," he said. Mike Bossley is an experienced marine scientist and researcher who has worked closely with Port Adelaide's dolphin sanctuary. He is currently working with a group of colleagues to determine how many recent dolphin deaths may be linked to the algal bloom and hopes to have findings into that research within the next week. While he agreed some of the federal funding should be spent on relief measures, he wants more of the money to go towards research. "Equally, and more importantly, we have to put money into research into mitigating these blooms," he told ABC Radio Adelaide. "We need to find ways to recover from them because they are going to keep coming." He said being able to predict the blooms would be "only so helpful" and instead wants the focus to be around mitigating the impacts of the bloom with a look at current marine parks systems just one idea. He said South Australia's toxic algal outbreak had "international implications" as there were marine heatwaves occurring around the world at the moment. He pointed to an algal bloom in California killing dolphins and seals. "The reality is this is the first time we have experienced something like this in our state, a bloom as extensive as this, and we just don't understand it well enough to make any really telling predictions," he said. "It does seem to most of us working in science that climate change and marine heatwaves, which are a consequence of that, are just going to get worse and that's going to make these constant blooms and other issues to do with warming water." When asked if the issue had been taken seriously enough he said: "I'm sure we will be taking it more seriously in the future, but it's easy with hindsight to say we should have known what's going to happen". "This thing just started gradually getting worse and worse and we haven't had that before and nobody quite knew what was going to happen and what to expect." State Opposition Leader Vincent Tarzia was also critical of the state government's response. After relief measures to affected industries, he wants the government to commit some funding towards a royal commission. "The premier and the government have been far too slow to respond, given the significant scale of the environmental damage that has been caused by this algal bloom," Mr Tarzia said. "We want to understand exactly what is driving this ... there's a whole range of theories, some people are saying it's got something to do with the desal plant, others are saying it's marine heatwaves, others are saying nutrient runoffs. "The government is spending millions and millions of dollars in bringing a climate conference here to South Australia, now we think $1 million or $2 million for a royal commission after the initial funding has gone out the door to affected people and businesses, we think that is a worthwhile investment. "A royal commission is one of the highest levels of parliamentary scrutiny that we can apply because we don't want to see any cover-ups here." The state government has pushed back on that demand, and has said it would prefer to spend the money supporting scientists. Holdfast Bay Mayor Amanda Wilson, which encompasses the popular beach suburbs of Glenelg and Brighton, said the council had been forced to redirect staff away from their usual duties of fixing roads and footpaths, to clean up dead marine sea life washing up on the beaches. She said someone has to help pay for that and hopes some of the funding might be directed that way. "Obviously it's been a big drain on our resources and it's imperative for us to keep our beaches clean," she said. "But we'd also be very concerned about tourism going into the summer months and how that's going to affect our tourism precincts." While making the $14 million announcement yesterday, Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt stopped short of declaring the algal bloom a national disaster. Premier Peter Malinauskas said while he welcomed the funding, a sum he said his government asked for, he had also hoped for a national disaster declaration. "We've asked for $14 million which is a line to a suite of measures that we have formulated as a state government and we believe will make a difference on the ground," he said. "We are saying as a state government, and this is where I guess there is a point of difference between us and our federal colleagues, that we believe this should be declared as a natural disaster formally. That would unlock federal funding. "This is a natural disaster, I think it needs to be treated as a natural disaster." Holdfast Bay Mayor Amanda Wilson said the council had also called on the government to declare a national disaster and was critical of the government's visit yesterday. She said she had written to both Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Environment Minister, but was yet to formally hear back. "The community really wants to hear from the Prime Minister and the Environment Minister what is happening. I think yesterday didn't really cover off what we wanted," she said. "We want to have more answers about what's happening, what's caused this because in the vacuum of information conspiracy theories are taking root and I think we really need to address what the causes are and how we are going to solve this."
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Science
- The Guardian
This Jurassic-era relic has survived 150 million years on Earth – now it's one big fire from extinction
For the last five weeks, Jane Ogilvie has searched a patch of dense shrub shaded by sugar gums on Kangaroo Island in South Australia for a surviving relic from 150m years ago. The only known home of the critically endangered Kangaroo Island assassin spider is in the north-west of the island, where the Jurassic-era spider hides out in moist clumps of leaf litter. In more than a month of searches, and with just a couple more weeks to go, Ogilvie and a few helpers have only found one tiny juvenile. 'We get so excited when we find a good area but then it's deflating. Everything is so dry – it's hardly rained for two years,' says Ogilvie, a conservation biologist working with the charity Invertebrates Australia. Last year, scientists found just one mature female and six juveniles at six locations, all in a 20 sq km area that includes a block of land owned by mining billionaire Andrew Forrest. Those same locations have come up blank this year. The spiders need the moist microclimate of the leaf litter to survive, but there's a trifecta of threats drying out their habitat and pushing them ever closer to extinction. The spider's last remaining bolthole has been through near-record drought over the last 18 months, with rainfall among the lowest on record since 1900. The black summer bushfires burned through large areas of potential habitat that have not yet recovered, and an invasive plant root disease known as phytophthora is damaging the forest canopy and the plants that hold some of the leaf litter where the spiders live, drying out the habitat even further. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email 'If we look at the risks and [are] realistic, they're potentially one big fire away from extinction,' says Dr Michael Rix, the principal scientist and curator of arachnology at the Queensland Museum, who collected the first specimens of the spider and, with scientific colleague Mark Harvey, formally described them. 'By all objective measures, its existence is phenomenally precarious.' The Kangaroo Island assassin spider is one of 11 invertebrates on the federal government's priority list of threatened species. The assassin family of spiders – which get their name from their habit of slowly stalking and then eating other spiders – are found only in Australia, Madagascar and parts of southern Africa. Kangaroo Island's assassin was found in 2010 by Rix, who, along with Harvey, has described 37 of Australia's 41 assassin spiders. 'We collect this suspended leaf litter and shake it. The spiders close their legs and they drop down. I looked in the tray to see what's there – I knew it was undescribed. It was one of the really memorable moments of my field biology career. Very exciting,' he remembers. Rix says they have the most unusual appearance of any spider, with 'incredible elevated heads and long spear-like mouth parts'. 'They're unmistakeable,' he says. 'They're an early branch in the spider's tree of life. Assassin spiders are ancient and those around today are survivors of 150m years of life on Earth. 'They were only known as fossils before any living ones were found in Madagascar in the 19th century.' Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion Kangaroo Island's species was feared extinct after bushfires swept across the west of the island in the black summer bushfires of 2019 and 2020 until Dr Jess Marsh, a research fellow at the University of Adelaide and an invertebrate conservation biologist based on the island, found two specimens in 2021 in a small patch of unburned vegetation. 'It's being squeezed into smaller and smaller areas,' says Marsh. 'Each survey we do is increasing our confidence that its restricted to this patch of vegetation, and nowhere else.' Marsh and colleagues are now discussing the idea of establishing a breeding program for the spiders in a zoo, creating an 'insurance population' – but removing individuals from the wild carries clear risks that Marsh says wouldn't be taken lightly. 'They've survived mass extinction events and past climate changes – a huge amount. Now in this short period of time, it's humans that are really testing them.' Rix says the precarious situation the spiders find themselves in is part of a much bigger wave of largely unseen extinctions of invertebrates. Officially, Australia lists only one invertebrate as extinct – the Lake Pedder earthworm. But last year, Rix, Marsh and colleagues released research that estimated that since the European invasion of Australia, about 9,000 invertebrates had likely suffered a so-called ghost extinction – 'the loss of undiscovered species that have left no trace.' 'Some people might say, 'who cares about a tiny spider going extinct'?' says Rix. 'But this is part of the quantum of invertebrate extinctions that we're experiencing right now. This might be a problem that creeps up on us. 'There's a concept of conserving evolutionary significant units – retaining diversity that speaks deeply to Earth's evolutionary history. That is what these spiders are – a window into the past. They're survivors. Trying to conserve them is so important.' Marsh and Rix were the only two people to have ever found a Kangaroo Island assassin spider, until this week's discovery – not by a scientist, but an enthusiastic 17-year-old volunteer called Jack Wilson who was filling his time during school holidays. 'It was probably my 10th sieve of the day,' he says. 'They can look like little blobs of dirt, but it's the big neck that gives them away. I'm pretty chuffed. It's crazy.'
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Science
- The Guardian
150 million years old and critically endangered: assassin spider stalks its prey
The Kangaroo Island assassin spider's only known home is in the north-west of the island off the coast of South Australia, where it hides out in moist clumps of leaf litter. As parts of Kangaroo Island – still recovering from the black summer bushfires – suffer through near-record drought, scientists say an invasive plant root disease is drying out the Jurassic-era spider's habitat even further
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Science
- The Guardian
This Jurassic-era relic has survived 150 million years on Earth – now it's one big fire from extinction
For the last five weeks, Jane Ogilvie has searched a patch of dense shrub shaded by sugar gums on Kangaroo Island in South Australia for a surviving relic from 150m years ago. The critically endangered Kangaroo Island assassin spider's only known home is in the north-west of the island, where this Jurassic-era spider hides out in moist clumps of leaf litter. In more than a month of searches, and with just a couple more weeks to go, Ogilvie and a few helpers have only found one tiny juvenile. 'We get so excited when we find a good area but then it's deflating. Everything is so dry – it's hardly rained for two years,' says Ogilvie, a conservation biologist working with the charity Invertebrates Australia. Last year, scientists found just one mature female and six juveniles at six locations, all in a 20 sq kilometre-area that includes a block of land owned by mining billionaire Andrew Forrest. Those same locations have come up blank this year. The spiders need the moist microclimate of the leaf litter to survive, but there's a trifecta of threats drying out their habitat and pushing them ever closer to extinction. The spider's last remaining bolthole has been through near-record drought over the last 18 months, with rainfall among the lowest on record since 1900. The black summer bushfires burned through large areas of potential habitat that have not yet recovered, and an invasive plant root disease – known as phytophthora – is damaging the forest canopy and the plants that hold some of the leaf litter where the spiders live, drying out the habitat even further. 'If we look at the risks and be realistic, they're potentially one big fire away from extinction,' says Dr Michael Rix, the principal scientist and curator of arachnology at Queensland Museum, who collected the first specimens of the spider and, with scientific colleague Mark Harvey, formally described them. 'By all objective measures, its existence is phenomenally precarious.' The Kangaroo Island assassin spider is one of 11 invertebrates on the federal government's priority list of threatened species. The assassin family of spiders – which get their name from their habit of slowly stalking and then eating other spiders – are found only in Australia, Madagascar and parts of southern Africa. Kangaroo Island's assassin was found in 2010 by Rix, who, along with Harvey, has described 37 of Australia's 41 assassin spiders. 'We collect this suspended leaf litter and shake it. The spiders close their legs and they drop down. I looked in the tray to see what's there – I knew it was undescribed. It was one of the really memorable moments of my field biology career. Very exciting,' he remembers. Rix says they have the most unusual appearance of any spider, with 'incredible elevated heads and long spear-like mouth parts'. 'They're unmistakeable,' he says. 'They're an early branch in the spider's tree of life. Assassin spiders are ancient and those around today are survivors of 150m years of life on Earth. 'They were only known as fossils before any living ones were found in Madagascar in the 19th century.' Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion Kangaroo Island's species was feared extinct after bushfires swept across the west of the island in the black summer bushfires of 2019 and 2020 until Dr Jess Marsh, a research fellow at the University of Adelaide and an invertebrate conservation biologist based on the island, found two specimens in 2021 in a small patch of unburned vegetation. 'It's being squeezed into smaller and smaller areas,' says Marsh. 'Each survey we do is increasing our confidence that its restricted to this patch of vegetation, and nowhere else.' Marsh and colleagues are now discussing the idea of establishing a breeding program for the spiders in a zoo, creating an 'insurance population' – but removing individuals from the wild carries clear risks that Marsh says wouldn't be taken lightly. 'They've survived mass extinction events and past climate changes – a huge amount. Now in this short period of time, it's humans that are really testing them.' Rix says the precarious situation the spiders find themselves in is part of a much bigger wave of largely unseen extinctions of invertebrates. Officially, Australia lists only one invertebrate as extinct – the Lake Pedder earthworm. But last year, Rix, Marsh and colleagues released research that estimated that since the European invasion of Australia, about 9,000 invertebrates had likely suffered a so-called ghost extinction – 'the loss of undiscovered species that have left no trace.' 'Some people might say, 'who cares about a tiny spider going extinct'?' says Rix. 'But this is part of the quantum of invertebrate extinctions that we're experiencing right now. This might be a problem that creeps up on us. 'There's a concept of conserving evolutionary significant units – retaining diversity that speaks deeply to Earth's evolutionary history. That is what these spiders are – a window into the past. They're survivors. Trying to conserve them is so important.' Marsh and Rix were the only two people to have ever found a Kangaroo Island assassin spider, until this week's discovery – not by a scientist, but an enthusiastic 17-year-old volunteer called Jack Wilson who was filling his time during school holidays. 'It was probably my 10th sieve of the day,' he says. 'They can look like little blobs of dirt, but it's the big neck that gives them away. I'm pretty chuffed. It's crazy.'
