Annual and Post Flood Seagrass Monitoring in Hervey Bay and the Great Sandy Marine Park - 2025

Flooding of the Mary River and associated flood plumes in 2022 caused substantial declines in seagrass meadows and associated impacts to dugongs and green sea turtles in Hervey Bay and the Great Sandy Strait. In response, the Queensland Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation (DETSI) partnered with James Cook University (JCU) to undertake a series of post-flood seagrass assessments across Hervey Bay and the Great Sandy Strait between 2022 and 2024 and develop a longer-term monitoring strategy to assess seagrass recovery and a basis for ongoing monitoring within the Great Sandy Marine Park (GSMP). The long-term monitoring strategy is based on annual assessment of 12 representative monitoring areas spanning intertidal, shallow subtidal and deep-water habitats across key management zones within the marine park, ideally with periodic broadscale surveys of the entire GSMP (every 5 years) to align with regional dugong aerial surveys. This report details the findings of the second of these annual scale surveys conducted between October and November 2025.

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