It’s official. The water quality in Gladstone Harbour is fine despite one of the world’s biggest dredging programs. Sick fish are getting better, there are no health problems and the three week fishing ban over 500 sqkm of waterways has just been lifted.
Apparently more than 20 fishermen who presented with serious infections and skin lesions after coming into contact with what they claimed to be infected fish and contaminated water are mistaken.
Queensland Seafood Association president and cardio-surgeon Dr Michael Gardner doesn’t think so but swimming in the harbour has also been officially sanctioned by State Government authorities and all the kids who had to pack their fishing rods away during the school holidays can dust them off and get back out in the harbour while the dredging continues as part of a program to move 46 million cubic metres of silt.
Great news, except many locals aren’t buying it. Nor are some doctors and scientists further afield, nor are the fishermen and neither am I.
Why? It’s a long and murky story, but first in my book is that marine creatures have continued to die since the ban was imposed. Fishermen have angrily denied claims by Fisheries Minister Craig Wallace that the number of sick fish was decreasing. Pro fisho Trevor Falzon was all over TV news bulletins on Thursday night claiming an approved test catch the previous night had netted 500 kg of barramundi, 80 per cent of which were diseased.
Also, recent water quality tests which led to a recent temporary halt by one of the major dredges, were not included in the media statement issued by the Department of Environment and Resource Management several days ago indicating everything was rosy. High turbidity readings are reportedly continuing and some questions have been raised over the testing program’s validity.
The dredging project is preparing for the current three $50 billion liquefied natural gas plants being constructed on Curtis Island in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, plus future coal terminal expansion in the harbour’s upper reaches at Wiggins Island. This is planned to eventually double coal exports.
In recent weeks a muddy line has stretched down the shipping channel past our beautiful Tannum Sands beaches and Wild Cattle Island National Park bordering the harbour’s entrance. I know marine creatures are still dying. I’ve seen them.
During a LARC environmental tour we saw the body of a dolphin baked black by the sun on the pristine sands of Middle Island some 30 km south of Gladstone. As the tour guide said, “Occasionally marine animals die”.
The same could possibly be said about the dead whale towed back out to sea off Curtis Island on the western side of the harbour. But then in the past fortnight I’ve seen four more dead turtles on local beaches and I’ve heard of more on Boyne Island. Last weekend a huge turtle (pictured above) washed up right in front of a wedding party at Canoe Point, one of Tannum’s most popular beach-side parks. A week later the slowly decaying quarter-tonne hulk presents an ironic answer to claims that all is well in the harbour.
The turtle toll has now passed 160 which is a tragedy in itself without factoring in other species including dolphin, dugong and commercial seafood. Government authorities including Gladstone Ports Corporation have blamed the depletion of seagrass beds by the January floods as the most likely cause but according to recent media releases, the seagrass is recovering well despite the dredging program. It’s true turtles have died elsewhere along the Queensland coast, but localised flooding here was minor in comparison to centres both north and south.
Meanwhile, fishermen, Gladstone State Independent Liz Cunningham and Federal LNP Member for Flynn Ken O’Dowd have all called for independent water testing in the harbour rather than relying on DERM to validate testing on behalf of the Ports Corporation.
The GPC has repeatedly claimed its massive dredging program is not impacting on water quality or causing any fish diseases, which have been identified as “red spot” and a rare fluke parasite.
O’Dowd told the Gladstone Observer on Wednesday:
“As at last week there had been no independent testing of the water….Dredging was suspended last Friday by the GPC and one has to suspect water samples taken from then would not have been taken under operational conditions. ...
“It is a big stretch to expect people to accept these tests are genuinely representing the situation in the harbour….”
He wants to know how the tests were conducted, what depths samples were taken at and what heavy metals were being tested for, and intends putting these questions to Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke at a Parliament House meeting scheduled for next Thursday. )
Environmental physician Dr Andrew Jerimijenko also finds the test results “perplexing”.
“The turbidity data from the Gladstone Ports website shows that there is still high turbidity well above the exceedence levels which has been notified to the Regulators…. My advice as a medical doctor, don’t eat diseased fish even if you are now allowed to catch them.”
A report to the GPC by consultants Environmetrics Australia dated September 8 raises serious questions about some aspects of the water testing program including sites where data was periodically missing, in some cases for more than a month:
“A recurring data quality issue has been that of ‘missing values’ – that is, instances where no reading was recorded. …We suspect the gravity of this issue has not yet been fully grasped by either the proponents or the regulator….”
The report said that to simply ignore these events “implicitly assigns a zero value to the missing data” which would result in underestimating the true value. To avoid or lessen this problem inferred or imputed values were now being used based on other readings immediately before the sampling period, and at other sites.
“We are unaware of any similar technique used to deal with missing values in environmental monitoring and to that extent, this is a ‘first’ for GPC and the project,” they said.
Some scientist contacts who pointed me to that report said claims water quality in the harbour had not changed were “simply unbelievable”. Turbidity levels were likely to be considerably higher as the official measuring stations are in deeper, cleaner water, while the really high turbidity levels were in shallower areas where dredge sediment was concentrated.
“This is what is happening on the water, but ‘no change’ is the official statement,” they said.
Somebody is telling the truth in all of this, others are not. There may well be other factors also influencing water quality and contributing to the sick fish syndrome such as contaminated ships ballast water from Japan as one caller suggested, or, as another said, material could be leaching from fly ash and other power station residues used for harbour-side land reclamation projects dating back to the 1970s.
The people of Gladstone, including those whose professional and recreational lives revolve around the once-magnificent natural harbour, deserve some honest answers.
So do the turtles, dolphins, dugongs, and other animals.
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