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After reading an article about sea levels rising and affecting the mangroves, it made me consider what it would mean for South Australia as a whole but also what would happen to the mangroves themselves. In the Port River, Located in Port Adelaide, South Australia, there are native mangroves forests that help fish breed and they also monitor the amount of salt in the water. Without mangroves, fish will decline and a lot of ecosystem services will disappear. With Australia having the second largest area of mangroves in the world, it's not only the fish and trees that will be affected. It has been estimated that the one million hectares of mangroves in Australia provide 194 billion dollars into the economy each year. If the sea levels are to proceed in rising, it means that instead of the mangroves that are in tidal rivers being under water for the average six hours, they would be under for much longer, meaning that they would drown and die. If the mangroves were to die, this would result in many of the local fish that live and breed in the mangroves dying also.
Our cruise on the Port River
After going on a cruise along the Port river with my Biology class, I got to see the mangroves first hand. As I looked at the trees I could see that they had various yellow leaves on the branches. The mangroves help monitor the amount of salt that is in the tree itself, because if it were to hold all the salt from the water in the entirety of itself it would surely die. What the mangroves do is send all the salt that it accumulates from the water and puts it all into particular leaves that send them yellow. Once the leaf holds a certain amount of salt, it dies the leaf drops of into the water, taking all the salt with it. I found it quite interesting that they can monitor the amount of salt in their tree's to help them survive. Of course the mangroves aren't in the salty water their whole lives. The Port River is tidal, meaning they are only in the water for a small period of time each day.
During the cruise we were fortunate enough to spot a few pods of dolphins. There are many dolphins in the Port River, but due to Temperatures rising in the river, many cannot stand it, and are dying. There are sections in the Port River that have highly increasing temperatures due to human construction, meaning that in some areas the temperature of the water reaches up to 42 degrees celsius. Especially near Garden Island, where one of Adelaide's main landfills is located, the temperatures are climbing increasingly high. As dolphins are territorial and stay in the same area of water for most of their lives, they don't escape the high temperatures of the water. Dolphins have been found washed up dead on the shores of the river, with tumours due to the pollution in the water also. Our local river has become highly polluted in many areas which is causing our natural inhabitants, such as fish and dolphins to die.
I hope to learn more into the topic of The Port River and its inhabitants and the mangroves. If the Port river was to die, along with the dolphins and mangroves it would cause for a major downfall in my local economy. It concerns me that this sort of thing is happening down the road from my school, and I hope to help make a change.
