January floods in Queensland still take toll on marine life

By Frances Adcock
4 August 2011

People living on the Queensland coast are being warned to expect more marine deaths because of flooding earlier this year. The president of the Wide Bay Conservation Council, Roger Currie, says the scale of the events has affected seagrass beds from Rockhampton to the Gold Coast. He says the habitat loss is affecting many marine animals. “The seagrass beds out the front here have virtually disappeared,” he said. “It will take a couple of years for that to come back and we going to see a lot of … marine mortalities from turtles and dugongs and potentially whales as a result.” Mr Currie says it will be hard to measure the full impact on marine life. “We’re going to have to adjust to the fact that mother nature does impact our values up and down the coast and the whale industry could be impacted by whatever the triggering events are from those floods,” he said.

Floods still take toll on marine life