Scientists Predict Mass Dieoffs For Dugongs/Sea Turtles; Queensland Flooding Burying Seagrass
Hundreds of dugongs and thousands of turtles will likely starve to death in coming months after flood waters smothered Queensland’s seagrass meadows with sediment.
Col Limpus, the chief scientist for wildlife and threatened species in Queensland’s environmental department, is so familiar with the pattern of death that follows big floods he can provide a timeline of what is in store.
“We can guarantee that in the months that follow we’re going to see an elevation in mortality strandings,” he said. “It’ll start to be obvious in about April and it will build to a peak that we’ll probably see in about September [and] October. “I expect we will jump from tens of dugong a year dying, stranding along the east Queensland coast, to hundreds. I’m expecting our stranding of green turtles will jump from hundreds to the low thousands.”
That’s what happened after Queensland’s devastating 2010-11 floods. It also happened in 1991, when two big floods about a month apart saw the Mary River dump vast amounts of fresh, sediment-laden water into Hervey Bay, killing about 1000 sq km of sub-tidal seagrass.
EDIT
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/mar/08/thousands-of-dugong-and-turtle-deaths-to-follow-queensland-floods-experts-predict
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