South Australian government officials say they are “cautiously optimistic” about the outlook for the state’s algal bloom crisis, but more foaming events are expected at metropolitan beaches.<\/p>\n
Marine scientist Mike Steer confirmed on Friday afternoon that in the past week, only four of the 95 monitored sites had “shown or demonstrated a level of increase”, while 16 had shown a decrease and 75 “remain steady”.<\/p>\n
“We are seeing some positive signs and are cautiously optimistic,” he said.<\/p>\n
“One of the challenging things with this bloom is that it has the capacity to be really dynamic, so you’ll see large amounts of Karenia in one day or one week \u2014 it can decline to a significant level and then come back.<\/p>\n
“That’s why we’re saying we’re ‘cautiously optimistic’ \u2014 because over the period of time we’ve been analysing trends in this bloom, we’ve seen it has the ability to pulsate on the basis of the environmental conditions.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Metropolitan beaches are expected to continue experiencing algal bloom foam events.\u00a0 (ABC News: Bobby Macumber)<\/p>\n
“We are encouraged to see that areas like Kangaroo Island remain in the clear, and we’re seeing similar situations around southern Yorke Peninsula.”<\/p>\n
Foam still expected at metropolitan beaches<\/p>\n
However, Professor Steer said more foaming events were expected at metropolitan beaches.<\/p>\n
“We will expect to see more foaming events as we get strong westerly winds along the metropolitan coast, in association with high coastal wave activity and tide activity,” he said.<\/p>\n
Professor Steer said there were various future scenarios and, based on what had happened globally, three potential outcomes.<\/p>\n
He said the bloom could dissipate “really quickly”, increase and endure or “ramp up and then have a degree of seasonality to it”.<\/p>\n
Focus remains on supporting businesses<\/p>\n
Minister for Climate, Environment and Water Lucy Hood said the state government was continuing to work “closely” with the federal government ahead of the release of the algal bloom summer plan.<\/p>\n
“It’s very similar to the range of measures we’ve already been looking at, and that’s making sure we’re communicating with the public, ensuring they do have the latest advice to be able to make decisions,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It’s about supporting businesses as well as looking at the important piece of environmental resilience and recovery.”<\/p>\n
Ms Hood said she “very much” encouraged people to continue visiting beaches and to support local coastal communities.<\/p>\n
The state government is expected to release its summer plan in the next fortnight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Australian government officials say they are “cautiously optimistic” about the outlook for the state’s algal bloom crisis,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11949,6343,64,63,27929,29335,8168,6344,25278,44,127735,1124,102214,8246],"class_list":["post-206128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-algae","tag-algal-bloom","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-beaches","tag-cuttlefish","tag-fish","tag-marine-life","tag-natural-disaster","tag-news","tag-seals","tag-south-australia","tag-toxic-algal-bloom","tag-update"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}