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Last week we visited the Port Adelaide River Estuary. An estuary is a partly enclosed coastal body of water with countless rivers or streams combing with it to then further flow out to the ocean. Estuaries are a marine environment which is between river environments and also human environments. They can also subject to waves, tides, sediment and fresh water intakes from rivers. The contrast between high salt concentrated waters and fresh waters creates nutrients for the marine habitats in that particular body of water. So the water from our neighbouring Gulf St Vincent combined with fresh water from our river Torrens creates nutrients and life for our marine habitat here in Adelaide, Australia.
One of the healthy habitats an estuary can produce are the maintenance of mangroves. Mangroves are native to the Port Estuary and are vital for the balance of salt substances in the surrounding water ways in Adelaide. Mangroves are planted in the water and soak up the salt like a sponge into their leaves. The leaves then hold onto this salt slowly killing the leaves until they turn yellow. Once the have reached their maximum capacity for salt they fall off and return back to the water forming this circle of salt life which then of course keeps the balance. The Port Estuary used to be flourishing with mangrove plants which built a home for bird species and underwater creatures, however the human industries decided that they needed to cut down and scrap away these beautiful plants in order for their own industrial purposes. Industrial industries produce carbon emissions into our earths atmosphere and this has affected the Port Estuary severely. The balance of salt has been corrupted by the culling of mangroves and its not like they were replaced by something else that could contribute to a healthy environment, no they replaced them with big, ugly carbon dioxide producing factories.
The Port River Estuary plays a huge role in our lives. We can visit the estuary to learn about our environment, schools have frequent excursions there to view the dolphins and to analysis the environment for issue investigations. With the climate change and global warming increasing the world's temperature, dolphin populations have started to decrease. The waste that is created by manufacturers and dumped nearby these water ways also is a contributing factor to why these incredible, intelligent animals are dying off or moving away, because who wants to have waste drip into their lives and have that slowly sucking the nutrients our of their habitat.
To solve these problems, active measures have been taken to try and save the marine environment within the Port Estuary. For starters, a large wilderness is protected from destruction for urban sprawl and industrial work. SA Water also diverted the sewerage away and changed the deposit location, which resulted in a 30% decline for human waste being deposited into the Port River (Government of South Australia, 2003). In my opinion we need to have some sort of alliance with the human industries surrounding Port Adelaide and settle with a compromise. We need the industries for society to strive but we also need our estuaries to keep US alive!!!
