Ningaloo reef escapes Vance's fury

Wednesday, 04 August 1999

The Ningaloo Marine Park has been inundated with marine scientists investigating the health of the corals and fish and mapping the marine habitats. The Ningaloo Marine Park has been inundated with marine scientists investigating the health of the corals and fish and mapping the marine habitats. In the past few weeks, scientists from the Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM), Department of Environmental Protection and the Australian Institute of Marine Science spent two weeks in the marine park. Doug Myers, CALM's District Manager in Exmouth, said the main aim of the study was to re-survey the 19 long-term monitoring sites established a year ago on the back-reef coral areas. A secondary aim was to map the areas of coral, macro-algae, seagrass and other marine habitats. The monitoring sites extend along 260 km of coastline, spaced about one about every 15 km apart. Preliminary results have shown that cyclone Vance had very little impact on the Ningaloo Marine Park, except the corals at Bundegi in Exmouth Gulf. Although there were obvious signs of recently dead coral there were still large areas of live coral. Mr Myers said that considering there were eight metre storm surges occurring in this area and extensive damage on the Exmouth town-ship only a few kilometres away, the coral reef was remarkably resilient. "The reef at Bundegi should not take more than a few years to return to its normal healthy state," he said. A team of CALM marine scientists will also be establishing more long-term monitoring sites in the Ningaloo Marine Park this month. These will include sites to determine the impacts of people's activities on the marine park. "This helps disentangle the impacts from natural events such as cyclones from human induced ones," Mr Myers said. Popular commercial and recreational dive and snorkel sites and areas near proposed resort developments and day use areas will be selected as monitoring sites. Media contacts: Dr Chris Simpson 9432 5100 Jennie Cary 9432 5105

 

Page Top