Last month, the turbid waters in Exmouth Gulf cleared to reveal a wonderland of undamaged black corals and healthy reefs, but marine scientists are worried the area will miss out on protection.
Spend a day boating on the water in the Exmouth Gulf and you can never be quite sure what you'll see.one of the larger 850 species of fish foundBut put on a dive suit and mask to explore beneath the surface and you may be hard pressed to see much at all.
Black corals are more commonly found 50 metres and deeper but in the Exmouth Gulf they started from about 5 metres deep.Because of the difficulty in collecting at that depth, black corals are under-researched. "While true of some of the shallower more readily accessed sites, the further away and deeper the reefs were, the less this was the case."
Since the 1960s the Pilbara coast has steadily industrialised with ports servicing major resource projects. There was little macroalgae on many of the deeper reefs which supported healthy high cover of hard corals including multiple acropora, turbinaria, montipora, porite and other species. "It would be a shame to see the unique marine environmental values not be represented in conservation estate," he said.Rare baby turtles drive calls for greater environmental protections on WA coastMarine ParksAustralian murdered by Hamas farewelled as Israel says it aims to end its responsibility for the Gaza Strip — as it happened
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