{"id":15038,"date":"2025-07-22T08:44:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T08:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/15038\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T08:44:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T08:44:07","slug":"algal-bloom-killing-marine-life-in-south-australia-is-disaster-premier-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/15038\/","title":{"rendered":"Algal bloom killing marine life in South Australia is ‘disaster’, premier says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greens Senator for South Australia Sarah Hanson-Young is among those openly criticising the federal government, accusing them of underplaying the situation.<\/p>\n

“If this toxic algal bloom was wreaking havoc on Bondi Beach or on the North Shore in Sydney, the prime minister would have already been on the beach with a response,” she said.<\/p>\n

However, federal Environment Minister Murray Watt on Monday said while the bloom and its impacts were “incredibly disturbing”, the catastrophe did not meet the definition of a natural disaster under the country’s laws.<\/p>\n

The bloom – which now stretches from Coorong to the Yorke Peninsula, an area about double the size of the Australian Capital Territory – is decimating the local environment and lining the coastline with dead wildlife.<\/p>\n

“It is like a horror movie for fish,” Brad Martin – from OzFish, a non-profit organisation that protects fishing habitats – told the BBC in May.<\/a><\/p>\n

But the event is also wreaking havoc on the local economy. Representatives of the fishing industry say some of their members have had no income for at least three months.<\/p>\n

“I’ve got fishermen in tears on the phone,” Ian Mitchell – who works as a middleman between fishers and retailers – told the ABC. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Greens Senator for South Australia Sarah Hanson-Young is among those openly criticising the federal government, accusing them of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-15038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}