Ports and Shipping

Many major and minor ports and marinas operate in or adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area (GBRWHA) and thousands of ships traverse the waters of the WHA annually, often carrying cargos that we would not want released in an accident. These activities are vital to the normal social and economic function of Queensland, but pose some obvious potential risks to the environment.

CRC Reef is studying habitats nearest to the ports and major shipping lanes so that the environmental risks or impacts of port or shipping activities or mishaps can be best managed to minimise environmental impacts.

CRC Reef researchers are developing and applying hydrodynamic models of the major ports to allow better understanding and management of activities such as docking large vessels and dredging of ports and shipping lanes. This work also will provide new insights to the fate of chemicals or sediments in the water column associated with the normal port operations.

We are also working with the ports industry to monitor the composition of biological communities in ports in the interests of detecting any introduced species. This work is resulting in an unprecedented catalogue of species distribution data for inshore environments in tropical Australia.

In the same vein, we are working with government and industry partners to develop a novel process for treating the ballast water of international ships to ensure that no exotic species are introduced to the WHA in that ballast water. For more information about this project, click here. And for the final report from this project to the Dept of Environment and Heritage, click here.

We have been working hard with the industry stakeholders to define the overlap between the desires and needs for research of the major stakeholder groups, such as Ports Corporations and Australian Maritime Safety Authority. In addition, we have begun preliminary modelling work. The modelling work builds on strong existing ties between the Marine Modelling Unit at James Cook University and some of the Ports Corporations and is a good example of the sort of close collaboration between industry and research providers we look for in this program.

CRC Reef ports and shipping research tasks