Reef Check Australia Peel Island Project

Reef Check Australia is an innovative citizen science focused charity dedicated to educating and empowering community volunteers to better understand, appreciate and protect oceans and marine environments. We help people help reefs by providing the tools for the community to take positive action for our reefs. Through our network of volunteers, we engage in citizen science, connect people with reef science, and undertake local conservation projects.

Reef Check exists because the scale of monitoring and action required to help look out for reefs called for a network of local people united on a global scale. In 1999, the first ever global Reef Check survey into coral reef health showed the power of community involvement with scientific studies – better known as citizen science! It also shed light on the extent of human impact on reefs around the world. Reef Check Australia has been helping people to help reefs since 2001. Our programs offer a platform to bring together science, community and positive local action. Reefs are under threat, but we also know they are amazingly resilient systems, and, with suitable management and protection, we can support resilient reefs into the future.

Peel Island Restoration Pilot Project

Over previous centuries Moreton Bay hosted large expanses of vibrant coral reefs. These reefs have largely disappeared as a result of three processes:

1. Prior to European colonisation of what is now south-east Queensland many of the reefs failed to keep pace with rising sea levels and hence were slowly buried.
2. The remaining viable reefs were then decimated as a result of targeted limestone extraction to construct the newly established European colony during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
3. This mining and dredging activity has ceased. However, ongoing impacts of reduced water clarity and increased sedimentation as a result of both episodic and ongoing resuspension of fine sediments deposited in the Bay from agricultural and urbanised catchment runoff has led to the demise of all but two main reefs in the system.

Peel Island is an iconic place in Moreton Bay. Steeped in both indigenous and European colonisation history (including the host location for the lazarette – Leper Colony), Peel Island is now heavily used for recreational fishing (especially the western side), and the South-western side, known as Horseshoe Bay, is the premier anchorage for recreational vessels as a result of its shelter from the summer north easterly sea breezes.

Surveys of the southern end of Horseshoe Bay undertaken by Reef Check Australia (RCA) reveal remnant corals skeletons and rubble beds, and sparse surviving coral colonies.

Horseshoe Bay is the premier anchorage in Moreton Bay and on a typical summer weekend over one hundred private vessels can be at anchor. The site is renowned as a prime anchorage location featuring a glorious sandy beach, seagrass meadows and an attractive vegetated and un-urbanised island. In past decades, a thriving coral reef community existed at the western end of Horseshoe Bay but over time they have been destroyed primarily due to fine sediment discharge from adjacent catchments.

Reef Check surveys have shown remnants of coral exist at the western end of Horseshoe Bay, begging the question whether coral reefs in this area can be restored. To assess the viability of reef restoration in the area, Reef Check deployed fragments of coral found at nearby sites to determine whether the corals could survive in this particular area in the current water quality regime that features reduced light penetration and increased suspended sediment loads.

Peel Island Research Project Activity Statement