{"id":30118,"date":"2020-01-22T00:05:04","date_gmt":"2020-01-22T08:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/?post_type=custom_news&p=30118"},"modified":"2020-01-21T19:15:43","modified_gmt":"2020-01-22T03:15:43","slug":"australias-marine-animals-will-be-the-fires-unseen-victims","status":"publish","type":"custom_news","link":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/news\/australias-marine-animals-will-be-the-fires-unseen-victims\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s Marine Animals Will Be the Fires\u2019 Unseen Victims"},"content":{"rendered":"

As wildfires ravage Australia\u2019s land and forests, so far killing an estimated one billion terrestrial animals<\/a>, researchers worry marine and freshwater species will become invisible victims.<\/p>\n

More than 17.1 million hectares of land have burned across the country, with the worst fires currently raging in New South Wales and Victoria, states in the nation\u2019s southeast, according to Australia\u2019s Department of the Environment and Energy (DEE). Adrian Meder, a marine campaigner at the Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS), says these fires are leaving behind a huge number of charred plants and a massive amount of ash.<\/p>\n

Though Australia is in the midst of a massive drought<\/a>, when the rain inevitably returns\u2014as it already has in some regions<\/a>\u2014this organic matter will rush into rivers and flow into coastal lakes, estuaries, and seagrass and seaweed beds.<\/p>\n

The free-flowing silt will get into fish\u2019s gills and block sunlight that seagrass and seaweed beds need for photosynthesis, effectively strangling them. \u201cIt\u2019s essentially like putting a shade cloth all over the entire system,\u201d says Leonardo Guida, a shark campaigner with AMCS.<\/p>\n

The slurry of potassium, phosphorus, and nitrogen will also cause algae in the water to bloom. The algae will consume the oxygen in the water, suffocating species that rely on it.<\/p>\n

The fires have also torched many forests near the coast, destroying plants that filter silt and excess nutrients. The ecosystems are adapted to the low nutrient flows from the land, Meder explains. But \u201cthese fires have effectively clear-felled areas on a scale that hasn\u2019t been seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many commercial aquatic species, such as flathead, snapper, prawns, and various shellfish, begin their lives in coastal lakes and seagrass and seaweed beds. These coastal habitats are also spawning areas for species, including seahorses, and their degradation could send ripples throughout the larger ecosystem, the researchers say.<\/p>\n

Some of these effects are already being felt. In southern New South Wales and Victoria and on Kangaroo Island, the fires are causing problems for fisheries and aquaculture, according to DEE.<\/p>\n

When the rain began in the Central Coast region of New South Wales, members of the Darkinjung, a local Aboriginal land council, set up barriers to keep the deluge of silt- and ash-filled water out of the region\u2019s rivers, lakes, and estuaries. According to Kelvin Johnson, a senior land management officer with the Darkinjung, they have already seen some dead fish in nearby rivers.<\/p>\n

The wildfires and their aftermath have caused and could continue to cause cultural damage as well, Johnson says.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s Indigenous peoples, Johnson says, use sacred songlines\u2014a complex mix of celestial references, songs, oral history, and physical and cultural landmarks\u2014to navigate terrestrial and aquatic routes. Though it\u2019s too early to know the extent of the damage, Johnson says if the fires harm oysters, crustaceans, flathead, or mullet, that would mark a loss of these cultural touchstones.<\/p>\n

Last week, Australia\u2019s federal government announced an AU $50-million (US $35-million) recovery fund<\/a> (part of its AU $2-billion bushfire fund) to restore and protect damaged ecosystems and wildlife. But there has been no funding dedicated to marine and aquatic areas, Guida says. DEE notes that some of those funds may go to emergency interventions, such as erosion control, to stem sediment flows into aquatic ecosystems.<\/p>\n

The ocean and the coast need dedicated help, Guida says. Though the devastation on land is much more visible, the health of the ocean and the land are intrinsically tied together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As wildfires ravage Australia\u2019s land and forests, so far killing an estimated one billion terrestrial animals, researchers worry marine and freshwater species will become invisible victims. More than 17.1 million hectares of land have burned across the country, with the <\/p>\n

…<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":30119,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"acf":{"hero_video_url":null,"hero_video_caption":"","deck":"Ash and silt will choke underwater ecosystems.","authors_group":[{"by_group":"by","contributors_group":[27004]}],"word_count_override":"","podbean1":"","podbean2":"","redirect":"","geolocation":{"address":"Unnamed Road, Weethalle NSW 2669, Australia","lat":-33.88927306735091,"lng":146.51455854105896},"related":[21080,26092],"twitterimage":30120,"facebookimage":30121,"twitterdescription":"","edited":"","factchecked":"","code":"","no_old_story_flag":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30118"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/custom_news"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30125,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30118\/revisions\/30125"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/26092"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/21080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}