The end of this week marks the completion of our March quarterly monitoring round! We’d like to thank all of the participants involved in this round, from the staff of South Cape York Catchments, school students in Cooktown, staff at Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal, members of the Traditional Owner Reference Group in Mackay and as always the many community members choose to volunteer their time!

Uncle George, Yuwibara Elder and member of the Traditional Owner Reference Group, joins the Tangaroa Blue team in monitoring Harbour Beach in Mackay

Staff at Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal assist with monitoring at Hay Point

Every 4 months ReefClean and Tangaroa Blue partners conduct monitoring activities at 33 coastal and estuarine sites on Queensland’s east coast from Cape York to Burnett Mary spanning six Natural Resource Management (NRM) regions and almost 16 degrees of latitude.

Endeavour College Students in Cooktown attend monitoring run by South Cape York Catchments

Elijah, from Elijah’s world, is a regular at our monitoring events down in Bundaberg

The difference in the amount and type of marine debris over time is recorded using transects, and the activity often involves collecting samples of sand for AUSMAP to analyse for microplastics.

*A Tangaroa Blue staff member collects samples for AUSMAP microplastic assessments*

A volunteer measures out transects on 4 Mile Beach in Port Douglas

We’re so grateful to everyone who helps us collect this valuable data every quarter, and are excited to see what the results are for 2021. Stay tuned for our next round in June!

ReefClean is funded by the Australian Government’s Reef Trust and delivered by the Tangaroa Blue Foundation.

Published by

Mathilde Gordon