00:01The initial advice from the South Australian government was really more of a hope than
00:06anything else that this would be over in a couple of weeks, that Easter holidays last
00:10year wouldn't be affected and that regional fishing towns and the really important fishing
00:17industry in South Australia would be largely unaffected.
00:20Now a year on that has proven to be absolutely not true and so what scientists are really
00:27worried about now is that the algal bloom has lasted a full 12 months.
00:31So it's gone through winter and then summer and so they're very worried that this algal
00:40bloom may not go away.
00:42The fact that it has survived in the cooler waters and then in the warmer waters has many
00:46people worried that what we're going to see is an ongoing algal bloom like they have in
00:51parts of Florida where every couple of years they get these sort of devastating environment
00:57effects and not to mention some sort of health impacts as well.
01:01As it did spread along the coast, what were health experts, scientists telling the government
01:06about the risks here?
01:07Yeah, so this is the really interesting thing and what we've drilled into in tonight's story.
01:12And so what really happened was that the South Australian government got locked into a very
01:17fixed position on the algal bloom.
01:20They had this idea or this public health messaging that while it was devastating for the marine
01:26environment, it wasn't harmful to humans.
01:29And very early on scientists were being a little bit more cautious and they were saying, you
01:34know, when we get this algae under the microscope, when we look at, you know, when we have a close
01:40look at it, you know, we're seeing some different makeup that we haven't seen in South Australia
01:47before or anywhere indeed in the country.
01:50And very early on, in fact, in about May last year, scientists discovered that the algal bloom
01:57You
Comments