00:01Professor, thanks for joining me.
00:03Thanks for having me.
00:04Is the algal bloom going to ruin summer for beach-loving South Australians?
00:09It's not going to ruin summer, but it's going to, I guess, play a background role
00:15into how we will understand it and adapt to it.
00:19Will South Australians be able to swim at the beach?
00:21Absolutely.
00:22How can you be confident of that?
00:24The actual algae and the biotoxins that are produced by the algae,
00:30they're not significant health concerns.
00:34They can create an irritation for a proportion of the community.
00:40And you tend to only get that when the conditions get choppy, onshore winds.
00:47So the advice is if the water is clear and calm, then there's no problem at all.
00:54However, if it's discoloured or foamy, then there's just a heightened level of awareness to say,
01:00all right, well, if I'm susceptible to itchy eyes or coughing or whatever,
01:06then perhaps I should move somewhere else.
01:08And we see it with surfers, for example.
01:11They're pretty keen to get out and there's no stopping them.
01:17What about fishing?
01:18Should people be mindful or scale back on their fishing this summer?
01:22The fishing one's an interesting issue because the bloom has only really impacted a proportion of that biodiversity.
01:33It tends to, it tends to impact those fish that are inshore, that are side attached, that are coastal.
01:40You know, we've seen impacts on, you know, flathead, leather jackets, sharks and rays.
01:46But there are other species that aren't impacted.
01:49You know, the Western Australian salmon, the fish that live further offshore.
01:54So in terms of saying, you know, stop fishing altogether, it doesn't really make sense
02:01because there are other species out there that are doing relatively well.
02:04These questions about swimming and seafood, they come up a lot.
02:07Is that an indication that public messaging around the algal bloom has been ineffective?
02:12We've not encountered this before, so I can understand that there'd be a level of concern.
02:21And most definitely, we're trying to engage in all the various media and messaging channels where we can.
02:29Because the message is complicated or has a level of complexity,
02:33then we just need to continually try and provide that clear, transparent statements.
02:41To what extent has CIDI been hampered by funding reductions or grant programs that haven't been renewed in the past?
02:47So our role and responsibility as a research provider is to undertake applied research
02:54that's going to benefit the sustainable and economic development of South Australia's primary industries.
02:59We get a level of funding, but we're creative where we can partner with universities, with industry to leverage more funding.
03:10And that's a model that's been happening for CIDI for decades.
03:16In any environment that relies on funding for science, it can be challenging.
03:23However, we consistently step up to that challenge.
03:26We've heard state and federal governments repeatedly blame scientific advice for their slow reaction to this algal bloom.
03:34Is that fair?
03:35To some extent, it's fair because, from a scientific perspective,
03:43is because we, you know, we've experienced a half-way algal bloom in the past in 2014 in Coffin Bay.
03:51And that only lasted a few months.
03:53Should you have been more open in those early days to the possibility that this could extend months or years?
03:59Well, we anticipated when the bloom started in a regional part of South Australia,
04:07that the oceanography and the weather would have dissipated it relatively quickly.
04:12And we kept our eye on it.
04:13I think it caught us all off guard a little bit.
04:17It's probably somewhat unfair to say, you know, we responded late.
04:23This is new for us.
04:25And in terms of our response, there are people working frantically behind the scenes
04:33to understand not only the role of the algal bloom but the ramifications of it to South Australia's communities.
04:39And that's where we are.
04:40That's where we're going to be.
04:41That's where we're going to be.
04:42That's how we get to see.
04:43That's where we're going to be.
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