An oil slick stretching 12 kilometers long has been reported in
the Shark Bay World Heritage area at the most westerly point of the
Australian continent. It extends into the most important nesting
site in the state for rare loggerhead turtles.
Authorities say the spill has affected an area between Crayfish
Bay and False Entrance on the western side of Dirk Hartog Island.
The spill is within the designated world heritage area but not
within Shark Bay itself. The location is extremely remote and
subject to very rough seas.
Shark Bay is located at the westernmost point of Australia.
(Photo courtesy UNESCO)
Western Australia's
Planning and Infrastructure Minister Alannah MacTiernan said the
spill was reported to her staff in Fremantle on Monday. "Two members
of the Department of Planning and Infrastructure's Environment
Protection Unit have been sent to the area," she said.
"The members of our Environment Protection Unit will be assessing
the nature and extent of the spill to determine what action needs to
be taken," MacTiernan said.
The Department of Planning and Infrastructure will be working
with the Australian Maritime Safety Authority to identify the
polluter. If the slick is identified as fuel, the maritime agency
will help the Western Australia government by providing details of
ships in the area over the past few days.
"If feasible we would then launch an investigation," a spokesman
for AMSA said Tuesday.
The Western Australia Department of Conservation and Land
Management said Tuesday that a decomposing whale could be the source
of the slick.
Loggerhead turtle on Dirk Hartog Island. (Photo courtesy
Dirk Hartog
Island)
Shark Bay is renowned for its diverse
marine life and was placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in
1991. Its sea-grass beds, which cover 4,800 square kilometers, are
considered the largest and richest in the world.
Humpback whales use Shark Bay as a migratory staging area,
bottlenose dolphins frequent the bay, and the bay supports more than
10,000 dugong, about 12 percent of the world population.
Its stromatolites - colonies of algae which form hard,
dome-shaped deposits - are among the oldest forms of life on Earth.
Of the 26 species of threatened Australian mammals, five are
found on Shark Bay's Bemier and Dorre islands, according to a survey
conducted by IUCN-The World Conservation Union.
The threatened mammals are the burrowing bettong, Bettongia
lesueur; the rufous hare-wallaby, Lagorchestes hirsutus; the banded
hare-wallaby, L. fasciatus; the Shark Bay mouse, Pseudomys
praeconis; and the western barred bandicoot, Perameles bougainville.
The rich bird life in Shark Bay includes over 230 species, with
11 breeding marine birds.
Shark Bay is also an important nursery ground for crustaceans,
fishes and coelenterates. The marine flora is dominated by seagrass
beds providing a substratum for 100 species of zoophytes, juvenile
fish and sea snakes. There are 323 fish species.
As its name suggests, large numbers of sharks including bay
whalers, tiger sharks and hammerheads can be found in Shark
Bay.
