As Australia heads into summer, swimmers and surfers are flocking to the beaches. But an algal bloom has left the fate of the upcoming holiday season along parts of the country’s southern shoreline in the balance.
Seasickness is an affliction that affects the sailor, not the waves.
But along swathes of the continent’s southern coast, the sea is sick, and its symptoms are showing few signs of improvement.
If anything, they’ve been spreading — a fact that artist and surfer Zoe Brooks, from Christies Beach in Adelaide’s south, has learned the hard way.
After spending time on the board, she developed a sinus infection, and noticed that others at the beach were “starting to feel really unwell all the time” — which led to a devastating conclusion.
“It wasn’t safe anymore to go surfing,” she said.
For Zoe, who was brought up on ocean air, that realisation was followed by feelings she likens to grief, but she has little doubt about what was to blame — her suspicions quickly fell on sea spray contaminated by South Australia’s disastrous algal bloom.
For at least six months now, that bloom has been lapping at the state’s shores, claiming Zoe’s beloved stretch of water as a casualty and turning her coastline into a frontline.
Every few days, it is strewn with the fresh carcasses of marine creatures that were starved of oxygen and then unceremoniously coughed up by the tide.
The sea is drowning in bloom and Zoe can no longer bring herself to confront the consequences.
“It hurts too much to go down there,” she admitted.
“It’s like we’ve lost someone. We’ve had a death in our community, in a sense.”
The funereal sentiment is not hyperbole — in similar spirit, nocturnal vigils have been held along the coast.
To express her sorrow, Zoe has thrown herself into an art project called “Toxic Surf”.
But the ripples from the bloom are radiating well beyond the rock pools.
In the six months since the algae surfaced, the term Karenia mikimotoi (the species at the heart of the bloom) has become common currency in South Australia.
In late March, a government scientist declared there were signs the bloom was “starting to break down and to dissipate” — a statement that has not aged well.
But recrimination is not necessarily a priority at a time when the collective gaze of beach-dwellers, fishers, coastal businesses and seaside tourism operators remains firmly fixed on the immediate future.
Spring is underway, hot weather is on the horizon and Zoe is not the only one wondering about what an algal summer could look like.
‘Unprecedented’ in Australia
The scope of the algal bloom can be difficult to picture, even for those who are tracking the spread.
But there are rough rules of thumb that can serve as helpful visual aids.
Several months ago, the state government said the bloom was “not far off the size” of Kangaroo Island, an area covering more than 4,000 square kilometres.
That is about 80 times the size of Sydney Harbour.
But unlike a static island, the bloom is ever on the move.
Marine scientist Mike Steer has compared its clockwise currents to a “conveyer belt” that has pushed algae into the state’s St Vincent and Spencer gulfs and along the edges of its Eyre, Yorke and Fleurieu peninsulas, as well as Kangaroo Island itself.
South Australia’s mainland has a seafront that exceeds 3,800 kilometres in length, and the state’s islands contribute another 1,200 kilometres to the total.
The bloom has, Professor Steer said, “impacted” about 30 per cent of that expanse — a figure that roughly equates to 1,500 kilometres of sea front. That is a distance of greater length than Melbourne to Brisbane, as the crow flies.
The impacts themselves can be measured in various ways, but all of them are daunting.
Beaches have been blanketed by noxious foam, commercial fishing catches have dwindled and the scale of the mortality is almost overwhelming.
But the countless dead aquatic animals that have washed up on shorelines are the tip of the iceberg — beneath the surface, seabeds have become deathbeds.
Maritime maps of the bloom’s movements give the impression of a combat zone and an enemy on the advance.
For Professor Steer, who has been skippering the state’s official response to the bloom, the algae has taken the nation into uncharted waters.
“In terms of Australia and South Australia, the extent and duration of this bloom is unprecedented,” he said.
Professor Steer is not just the South Australian Research and Development Institute’s executive director — he is also its public face.
He is featured in television and radio commercials and is the central figure at the state government’s COVID-style weekly media updates.
“If you look around the world, there are other algal blooms that have persisted longer — there was one in the Gulf of Mexico in the late 1940s,” he explained.
“That hung around for 30 months, which is probably the longest one that I can find evidence of.
“We would be ranked, maybe, in the top 10 around the world.”
Making hay, making pay
Professor Steer’s job is to work out what the bloom has done, is doing, and will do next.
Those questions aren’t of merely academic significance — communities and livelihoods depend on them, as Port Elliot surf shop owner Ben Hewett discovered earlier this year.
“We used to just go to the beach every afternoon and then this bloom started,” he said.
Ben’s hometown, which is close to where the bloom was first detected, is a place of old-world charm.
The Fleurieu’s dairy pastures descend and dissolve into seething seas where whales, once hunted and harpooned, find sanctuary.
Between the water’s edge and Antarctica, there is an unbroken vastness of open sea.
The swells, which come directly off the Southern Ocean, tend to be more vigorous and forceful than those at places such as Christies Beach on the other side of the peninsula.
Port Elliot was once Kombi country, and the sight of sun-bleached hair billowing from a driver’s window beneath a panel of gleaming fibreglass strapped onto a roof rack remains relatively common.
Indeed, the town’s sway over surfers is almost tidal — they are pulled there by the power of the waves.
Amid the sea breezes, Ben’s place of business is the very embodiment of what might be called “surf chic”.
Fresh boards line the walls, and a clothes rack holds a collection of the branded, loose-fitting T-shirts favoured by surfers in their onshore moments.
“Hopefully we can spread positive awareness that it can be safe [at the beach],” he said.
Despite the laid-back mood, he admits he is “probably a little bit worried leading into summer”, because he relies on the ebb and flow of seasonal tourism.
The only barrels Ben likes staring down are those of waves.
“For a business on the south coast, summertime is the time when you make money,” he said.
“The expression is ‘make hay while the sun shines’ and that’s very true for down here.”
Braving the waves
For those like Ben, scientists can offer only limited assurances. Professor Steer is adamant that “this algal bloom will pass — it won’t be the new normal”, but he can be little more definitive than that.
“We don’t know if this is going to be a one-off,” he said.
The question of how long it’ll last, he added wryly, is one he gets asked “at least 10 times a day”.
Currently, there are three possible answers, he said. The first, which would be the most welcome but could be the least likely, is that the algae will disappear “really quickly”.
“The ecosystem can balance itself and it can disappear, and we’ve seen that in the past in other places around the world,” he said.
In scenario two, the bloom abates for a while before making a comeback.
“We have seen other jurisdictions like Florida that encounter algal blooms on almost a seasonal basis,” Professor Steer said.
In the third and worst-case scenario, he said, it could continue to “ramp up” through spring and summer. That theory is helping the government form its yet-to-be released “summer plan”.
But regardless of which of those possibilities eventuates, there are still plenty of swimmers and surfers who are determined to brave the waves.
The Dawn Dippers, for instance, have been something of a barometer of the bloom.
The ranks of this intrepid collective of sunrise swimmers have expanded and contracted in accordance with the bloom’s severity.
“It hasn’t put me off, but it most definitely has put some off. There’s less of us dipping,” said group member Theresa Bridle.
“I have taken more precautions, so I wear my dive mask to protect my eyes and my nose and go home and always shower instantly.”
The dippers are made up of about 30 early risers who have found an unexpectedly deep tranquillity in the frequently chilly shallows off Moana, one of Adelaide’s southern beaches.
“Hopefully with the summer on its way, that will encourage more people to want to go into the ocean,” Theresa said.
“I’d like to think we’re over the worst of it, but who’s to know?”
The group’s founder Sue Oliver has equally mixed emotions.
Sue has a serious lung condition and has been reluctant to re-enter the water because of the algae.
“We can kid ourselves that we’re tougher than the algae but it’s really affecting us,” she said.
“People live here because of the ocean. This is our playground, this is where we connect.”
But Sue still enjoys the esplanade and has faith that nature will set itself right.
“I don’t feel helpless about it — I just have to accept this is the situation at the moment,” she said.
Further south along the same coast, surfer Zack Dowd has a similar outlook.
After a session on the waves, the bloom left him with a scratchy throat and struggling to breathe.
“The worst effect was during a storm when the water was really stirred up and really quite foamy and it was like soap hitting your eyes,” he said.
“It definitely stopped me surfing a little bit.”
But a surfer can only be separated from the sea for so long, and Zack said there would always be those ready to hit the water, regardless of rain, hail or bloom.
“If there haven’t been waves in ages, people are going to want to surf,” he said.
‘Ecological grief’
Near Christies Beach, Zoe Brooks recently took part in an unusual but striking rite.
The bloom is out of her hands — but those hands haven’t been idle.
Zoe is part of a flock of concerned souls that has turned to craft for an outlet for its feelings.
“We are ocean people and live our lives around the ocean,” Zoe said.
“[But] we are starting to really feel that ecological grief — by having the ocean taken away from us.”
A week ago at dusk, along cliffs that face the breakers, the small but committed congregation raised aloft a ray of hope — an illuminated eagle ray.
The bamboo and paper beast of the deep was part totem, part talisman, part distress signal and part beacon.
The event was a dress rehearsal of sorts for the “Toxic Surf” exhibition, in which community members will gather with lanterns representing sea animals that have fallen prey to the bloom.
“We realised once it started coming up the coast into the Mid Coast on our doorstep that our community needed to come together,” Zoe said.
In summer, surf lifesavers patrol that stretch of water, ready to launch a sea rescue to assist any hapless swimmer who is out of their depth.
But how should we react when it is the sea itself that needs rescuing?
“It feels like it’s out of our control,” Zoe said helplessly.
“That’s what ecological grief really is — losing that connection.”
In Homer’s Odyssey, the sirens are creatures that lure sailors to their deaths through the “sweetness of their song”, and the Greek poet records of his hero that he “heard the wondrous singing of the Sirens, and went on to the wandering rocks”.
Along South Australia’s coasts, a different siren is sounding. It is neither sweet nor shrill, but is urgent nonetheless.
Its murmur is every bit as persistent as the breaking of the waves.
Credits:
Author: Daniel Keane
Reporting: Leah MacLennan
Digital production: Daniel Keane
Photography: Che Chorley
Graphics: Stephan Hammat
Video: Sebastian Dixon
Supplied video: Moana Dawn Dippers
Editing: Jessica Haynes and Sara Garcia