17 August 2020

It’s Science Week! We’ll be sharing a few videos about our research in the Gulf of Carpentaria this week.

The final video (videos appearing in 5-1 order below) for this week looks at the challenges of managing marine debris and waste in remote Cape York communities.

• Remote communities on Cape York Peninsula face heavy loads of marine debris such as ghost nets that wash up on north Queensland beaches. The remoteness of these communities makes it a challenge to deal with this waste and debris which mostly comes from other places.

Our fourth video this week is about research looking at how to protect marine turtles from feral pigs on Cape York.

• Feral pigs on Gulf beaches were predating on the eggs in 100% of marine turtle nests. Hub research is developing technologies to link monitoring with adaptive management responses by Aak Puul Ngantam rangers, meaning that more baby turtles are hatching & reaching the waters of the Gulf.

Our third video for the week returns to three of the major rivers that flow into the Gulf of Carpentaria and considering their importance for fisheries.

• Flows from rivers into the Gulf of Carpentaria contain nutrients that support the growth and reproduction of important fisheries species like banana prawns and barramundi. This project investigated the importance of three rivers – the Mitchell, Flinders and Gilbert – to Gulf fisheries.

The second video this week focuses on mangroves in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

• Australia has 7% of the world’s mangroves. During the 2015-6 summer, one of the worst mangrove dieback events ever recorded devastated ~7400 ha of mangroves along >1000km of Gulf of Carpentaria coastline. This project produced a field guide for Indigenous rangers to monitor mangrove condition in the Gulf.

The first video focuses on the importance of Gulf of Carpentaria coasts for migratory shore birds.

• These birds fly to Australia from as far away as Alaska every year, and rely on the worms, crabs, clams and other food of the Gulf mudflats and sandflats to fatten up for their journey. This collaboration between Carpentaria Land Council Aboriginal Corporation and Griffith University is showing just how important the Gulf is for these long-distance fliers.