| Summary: | This is the fifth year of annual seagrass monitoring for the southern marine zone in Mackay-Whitsunday-Isaac Healthy Rivers to Reef Partnership (HR2RP). The overall condition of seagrasses across the three monitoring meadows was rated as good in 2021 with all three indicators (biomass, meadow area and species composition) scoring good or very good against the baseline. This year is the first time that scores can be generated for inclusion in the HR2RP report card, now that the requirement for 5 years of baseline data has been met. There were favourable conditions for seagrass growth leading up to the 2021 survey, with no noteworthy natural or anthropogenic impacts in the region since the previous survey. The two large seagrass meadows along the mainland coast were in a similar condition to 2020 when they had shown a general improvement in meadow area and biomass from the initial seagrass monitoring conducted in 2017 following Cyclone Debbie. The smaller offshore meadow adjacent to Flock Pidgeon Island had recovered from the substantial decline in area recorded in 2020 to be in good condition in 2021. The low above-ground biomass thin leaf seagrasses meadows in the region continued to have a high level of utilisation by dugongs with dugong feeding trails recorded in all meadows as well as the presence of a numerous green turtles during the survey.
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