Senate Inquiry – Water Quality – Great Barrier Reef -November 2019 Supporting material on the conflicting presentation of reporting on water quality, silt and nutrients. Presented is both a current and historical view of what is considered the relationship of nutrients on both land and within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park environment. Current Position. Farmers for the last 30 years have been challenged to conduct best practice. Many of these practices are covered in other areas but the focus here is the use of fertilisers, pesticides and run off be it silt or nutrients. Farmers have an important role to play in the economy by providing food for the community both here in Australia and overseas. That role is an essential activity in maintaining the health, vitality and good nutrition. To do that various aspects have to be determined at any area within Qld to arrive at a suitable position whereby food can grown or stock can be maintained at optimum health. Due to the varying quality of soil types each area will need specific treatments. Some areas require agricultural lime to improve the Ph of the soil which helps with water retaining properties. These soils also may need fertilisers to improve the nutritional value of the land to ensure plants and pastures provide the best quality of the varying products produced. The expectations over the years, has meant increased pressure to deliver the same quality of product and volume but with less water and less nutrients (silt and erosion not covered here). At some point this creates an imbalance in what is achievable under government regulations, to what is best practice to deliver what is best for the economy. The viability becomes untenable based on either excessive regulations or economically unviable due to restrictions on best practice. Given a farmer on average feeds 600 people, that is a huge expectation placed on farmers of which governments appear not to have any sound policy to manage policies that ensure farming is a viable entity. It is our view point that all ecosystems whether on the land or in the ocean require nutrients with some, more than others, depending on the position and composition at any place in time. To assume that nutrients are not required in the ocean or required to be restricted from land based when islands on the Great Barrier Reef have been pouring huge volumes of nutrients from Coral Cays, with tonnes of guano through the thousands of years, creates a severe contradiction as to what the farmers use and what tests have shown to be evident in the water samples. How are we viewed as causing detriment to coral, fish and other marine creatures when tests show nutrient values are significantly diluted by the time the water flows reach near the mouth and then to a point of being negligible within 20 meters off shore???? How are we viewed as causing detriment if the Scientific Panel clearly state they do not to this date fully understand the relationship between inorganic nutrients and coral on the Reef?? Given farmers use the exact same nutrients as nature does, which leaches out in copious amounts, one has to ask the question, how come the birds win over the farmers when their nutrients are of a far higher concentration into the ocean? Senate Inquiry – Water Quality – Great Barrier Reef -November 2019 How are we viewed as causing detriment if the organic nutrients are carried via floods and out of the control of anyone? If soft corals expel organic nutrients along with decomposing marine creature tissue not eaten, then how can you assess accurately what is from land and what is from the sea? Better still, how can anyone control those levels at all??? For the life time of the Great Barrier Reef it has been subjected to floods, nutrient run off, and destruction from coral bleaching, storms and cyclones, tectonic movements and lowering of the sea levels. The simple case of high winds over the ocean can create waves of such a velocity that causes damage to the Reef. It repairs and has grown to the position of where it is today. And man is so arrogant he states he can save it?? So where does man arrive at the position, that he knows oh so much about the Reef when he still has no idea how nutrients affect the corals? The coral and seagrass areas on the Great Barrier Reef are no different to the paddocks of pastures and lands cultivated to create food. Farmers oversee the type of stock for selected pastures and the quality of stock management for the area on which they graze. Crop farmers also make decisions on when to plant and when not to plant depending on the cycles of drought and monsoon. We can visually see what farmers do but we cannot visually see what happens in the oceans. The vision of massive floods, are adherent to many, with its size, volume and discolouration. Yet is this bad for the Reef? Just like new shoots after rain and growth of pasture grasses cattle improve and quality. Our native creatures on the land hold off breeding if conditions don’t suit. Prolonged drought will see kangaroos withhold the embryo until rains come. Fish so the same. If you don’t have the rains and floods you don’t have the food supply on the land and you don’t have the food supply in the sea. The organic nutrients that flow into the sea are food for the fish. Breeding of barramundi, need a 20/80% mix of fresh and salt for spawning on our headlands. If not then, they hold off until it rains or absorb the eggs until next time. The female absorbs the nutrients from the eggs. What the eye does not see the heart cannot grieve. The vision of clear ocean waters with beautiful coloured corals is the attractor of emotion but not all corals are pretty and no all creatures are viewed as vital to the ecosystem. Some have been seriously hit with the ugly stick but are the hardest workers in the system. Oysters, which are found mostly on the rocks and shorelines, filter 189 litres per day. So any unpalatable coloured water is filtered over time to be cleaner with nutrients and elements removed. Mangroves and brackish waters are smelly, full of mozzies, midges and sandflies yet is the ideal breeding ground for estuarine and inshore fish. Some of these fish travel long distances to fringe reefs and return to breed for juveniles to migrate up into the fresh systems to return as adults. Without flood waters and regular fresh flows from up stream off farms etc. this cannot be achieved. Our fish stocks both offshore and inshore depend on the organic nutrients from the floods. Mullet an ugly little sole is a very important fish which not only helps to keep rivers and streams clean of algae and moss but also is seen on coral out crops cleaning the moss off coral. Senate Inquiry – Water Quality – Great Barrier Reef -November 2019 Their numbers have been decimated with dams, weirs and barrages which is no different to the regulations that governments have imposed on farmers. Being hamstrung continually eventually means reduction of fish stocks and reduction of farmers who provide food for the community. Floods and normal tides pick up the Bat and other bird poop from mangroves and carry up the coast keeping inshore to lay the nutrients over the sea grass beds. If there are no floods, the seagrass don’t get the nutrients. How ever the Bats from mangroves areas provide a significant amount of guano and taken out on tides especially on Full and New moon as the higher tides collect it from areas that regular tides don’t get to. These are the same type of nutrients that farmers use so why are bats treated better than a farmer? The current bird hatcheries and migratory habitats with in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park are noted as follows: The Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area (World Heritage Area) is of international importance to seabirds and shorebirds, providing breeding and roosting habitat, feeding grounds and migratory pathways to at least 23 seabird species and 32 shorebird species. To date, analyses have been conducted on Atlas data of some key breeding sites of the Great Barrier Reef (Michaelmas Cay, Heron Island, the Swain reefs and Raine Island), which have revealed significant declines in populations of some of the most common seabird species (Turner et al. 2006). Wider analysis of the Atlas and other related databases is required to determine whether this trend extends throughout the World Heritage Area. In addition, seabirds have been identified as a highly vulnerable species group under a changing climate (Congdon et al. 2007).” Lady Musgrave Island is the southern most island of the Bunker Group of islands and also part of the region known as the Capricorn Bunker Group which contains 73–75 percent of all seabird biomass of the entire Great Barrier Reef. Lady Musgrave Island is identified as a significant seabird breeding island that provides habitat for thousands of nesting seabirds including the white-capped noddy terns that nest in abundance in the Pisonia trees whilst bridled terns, black-naped terns and silver gulls nest on the ground in more open areas closer to the beach. Birds create poop and all this poop washes into the fringing coral around the islands. These nutrients in fact promote faster growth and recovery of reef and also attract fish to the system.