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Newt Powers
@newtp
South Australia’s algal blooms have devastated marine wildlife. Facing suffocation and cellular death, the record-breaking summer heat wave and excess agricultural pollution paired with the lack of westerly winds have created a bloodbath. Warning: this is scary af and sad. Don’t watch if you don’t like dead fish
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kripcat.eth
@kripcat.eth
A salient point is that Adelaide sits close to the mouth of the Murray Darling river basin the largest river system in Australia and the source of 1/3 of Australia’s agriculture produce. The Murray Darling is one of the most hydrologically variable river systems in the world. (I.e strong swings between flooding and drought) which has a tendency to exacerbate nutrient runoff from synthetic fertilisers. It’s not the first time this has occurred in the Murray darling. The Menindee fish kill event was particularly stark: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uY4reiK507E It is the first time it’s occurred at such scale, so close to urbanised Australia. Which makes big difference in terms of attention. Time will tell if it will drive any kind of meaningful action. At a bare minimum we need the Murray Darling Basin Authority to allocate far more water to environmental flows, but it’s controversial because agriculture is the lifeblood of the towns along the river.
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Newt Powers
@newtp
This is very useful information thank you!!! You know what sucks about these videos is a) there’s so much I have to leave out, and b) i guess I need to do more research than just the mainstream articles and parts of a couple papers. Would have not known this. Were the prior blooms this large?
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Newt Powers
@newtp
Another thing I’m thinking about is that I’m also trying to educate people on more basic oceanography concepts, and that takes more time, so I legit can’t dive into as many details, which is a tradeoff, but I want to educate as many people as possible, so I take the risk
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kripcat.eth
@kripcat.eth
No judgement, just thought you might be interested.🙂 This is definitely the largest and particularly noteworthy because it’s happening along the coast. It’s one thing for the river to dry out and form stagnant billabongs in the outback heat, trapping fish, evaporating water and concentrating nutrient loads. Quite another for it happen on the coast with constant tidal flows and limitless water to dilute it. Really speaks to the quantity of nutrient run off. A stark demonstration of the consequences of overshooting planetary boundaries of biogeochemical flows.
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