Narrator: Radio Item 4:
This is 'Postcards from the Edge of the World'. I'm Catherine Small with a disturbing story from the Great Barrier4 Reef in Northern Queensland, Australia. Residents of the sleepy beachside town of Carrsville near the luxuriousresort of Port Charles were woken yesterday at 6.20 a.m. to the sound of a number of explosions that many wereconvinced was either a serious thunderstorm, blasts of gas or even planes nose-diving into the sea! It turned out,however, that the sounds heard were actually part of a series of 25 controlled explosions set off approximately200 metres offshore and conducted by marine authorities in an attempt to rid the sea of dangerous swarms ofPortuguese Man-O'-War jellyfish that have been plaguing the local beaches for the past two years.
No-one is certain why the jellyfish have made a home in the once clear blue waters near the popular resort, butwhat is certain is that something had to be done. The town relies almost exclusively on the resort and tourism forits survival; but Carrsville beach has been strewn with the deadly jellyfish now for the last two summers, and fishingand bathing are no longer possible. Last year, the Shire Council decided to enlist the help of Professor StephenBlunt, a British marine biologist working with the biology department at the University of Northern Queensland,who proposed a controversial solution to the problem involving the foreshortening of the 2 kilometre long rockshelf that lies 200 metres out to sea. The shelf apparently traps the creatures before they have the chance to escapeback to the ocean and this, in turn, encourages them to increase in numbers.
Global warming is thought to be at least partly responsible for slight changes in the recent patterns of moon tideswhich have, however, been enough to upset the delicate natural balance - allowing the jellyfish to reach the shorein numbers previously unheard of. By blasting away almost half of the rock shelf, Professor Blunt hopes thejellyfish will soon be a thing of the past. If the technique is successful, it may be used along other sensitive coastalwaters of Northern Queensland. Environmentalist groups are observing the experiment with caution. |