Estuary team gathers important research from local Marine Protected Area
On Friday, estuary scientists from the Oceanic Research Institute celebrated Marine Protected Areas Day by visiting the Aliwal Shoal Marine Protected Area to conduct important and progressive research on estuaries.
THE Oceanic Research Institute’s estuary team participated in the Marine Protected Area (MPA) Day Ocean Festival event which took place in the Aliwal Shoal Marine Protected Area (MPA) on Friday, August 2, where they sampled 9 out of the 10 estuaries that fall within the Aliwal Shoal MPA.
An estuary is a partially enclosed, coastal water body where fresh water from rivers and streams mixes with salt water from the ocean. Estuaries and their surrounding lands are places of transition from land to sea, and the Aliwal Shoal Marine Protected Area (MPA) is a wide 33km in total.
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The Oceanographic Research Institute (ORI) is a division of the South African Association for Marine Biological Research (SAAMBR), which is based at uShaka Sea World in Point, Durban. The institute strives to stimulate community awareness of the marine environment through education and promote wise, sustainable use of marine resources through scientific investigation.
According to a statement released by SAAMBR, the Marine Protected Area Day Ocean Festival event was a wonderful opportunity for the team to look at multiple estuaries for an inter-comparison such as whether the estuary was open or closed and whether the closed estuaries experienced overwash.
“Although overwash is an unusual word for a non-scientist, it is something to celebrate as it describes when the sea rich with larvae is able to enter a closed estuary, thereby offering the larvae a safe area to grow,” said SAAMBR in their statement.
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“They took along instruments to measure water parameters such as oxygen and temperature (among other things). They came home laden with samples and notes about the pressures facing the various estuaries and their individual vulnerabilities,” said SAAMBR.
According to SAAMBR’s recent statement, some of the estuaries experience challenges with invasive alien plants resulting in nutrient overloading while others are heavily polluted with litter.
“In support of the scientists collecting the estuary data, Ocean Festival founder Russel Symcox walked the 33km stretch wearing a GPS device and took sediment samples every kilometre. These samples will help us to better understand beach dynamics in the MPA,” said SAAMBR.
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