Seagrass ‘ back to best’
CLEVELAND Bay has become an underwater playground for tiger prawns and dugongs who live among the burgeoning seagrass growing offshore.
A report released this week has revealed seagrass mead- ows off Townsville have recovered to where they were nearly a decade ago.
JCU Centre for Tropical Water and Aquatic Ecosystem Research scientist Michael Rasheed said the results showed the seagrasses were recovering after extreme weather events leading up to 2011 and Cyclone Yasi.
He said below- average rainfall and less run- off had allowed the seagrass to recover.
“It It’s s a combination of less turbid waters washing into the bay and with drier conditions,” Dr Rasheed said
“Townsville seagrasses have come back really quickly compared to other places in Queensland.
“There were big declines in Cairns and they have been much slower to recover. They are coming back but they haven’t recovered as quickly as Cleveland Bay.
“Particularly pleasing is the return of the really dense sea- grass meadows that are a critical nursery area for important commercial and recreational fisheries species such as tiger prawns.”
JCU senior principal scientist at Tropwater Dr Robert Coles said the annual Seagrass Health Survey, commissioned by the Port of Townsville, had revealed conditions were ripe for boom tiger prawn seasons.
“When they were looking at seagrass meadows in the 1980s a clear link was found between the seagrass meadows and the number of tiger prawns,” he said. “The sea meadows are a nursery where they spend the first stage of their life.
“We have been down in Cleveland Bay looking at dugong and seagrasses and it is one of the places you can find dugong, turtles, rays and an array of sealife – it really is a magical place in the southern part of the bay out towards Cape Cleveland.”
Dr Rasheed said the sea- grass grew to 30cm and if it was out of the water it looked like a lucerne paddock.
“Seagrass communities’ health is one indicator that reef managers can use to understand the overall health of the marine environment,” he said.
“The recovery of seagrass also coincides with recent reports of increased numbers of dugong in Cleveland Bay and given that dugong are almost entirely reliant on seagrass for their food, it’s not a surprise.”