SEDIMENT CORES UNLOCK COASTAL HISTORY
CRC Reef researcher, Dr Gregg Brunskill, led a research cruise
on the R/V Lady Basten to Hinchinbrook Channel during early August. Sediment
coring was done by Ms Jo-Anne Cavanagh, PhD student working at AIMS with
Kathy Burns and Gregg Brunskill on the history of sedimentary deposition
of organochlorine pesticide residues in mangrove and coastal embayments.
This work is supported by CRC Reef and CRC Sustainable Sugar Production.
An ABC TV news crew filmed on the ship during this cruise. Ten good sediment
cores were retrieved, from the mangrove mudbanks to the continental slope
at 1000 metres depth. Collaborators on this cruise included Drs. Barb
Maher and Andy Perkins of the University of East Anglia (England), Dr
Michael Rosen (Institute of Geological and Nuclear Research, NZ), and
PhD student Gavin Dunbar from JCU Earth Sciences.
Dr Stewart Walker found a surface enrichment of mercury in a sediment
core from Missionary Bay. This core was dated using Pb-210 and Cs-137
gamma spectrometry methods by Brunskill, and the surface enrichment of
Hg appears to correspond to the history of use of organomercurial fungicides
in the Herbert River catchment canelands from 1950 to the present. This
finding was reported in a manuscript entitled "Mercuric and Demophoric
Pressure on the Hinchinbrook Channel Region Coastal Zone" at the
recent GBR Conference.
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