A review of water quality issues influencing the habitat quality in dugong protection areas

Abstract

In August 1997, the Commonwealth and Queensland Governments established 16 coastal Dugong Protection Areas (DPAs) to reduce the threat of mesh nets to dugongs (Dugong dugon). The DPAs are situated in the Central and Mackay/Capricorn Sections of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP) and the Hervey Bay–Great Sandy Strait region (Figure 1), and were enacted by Regulation No. 11 (1997) under the Queensland Fisheries Act 1994 and the Nature Conservation (Dugong) Conservation Plan 1999 under the Nature Conservation Act 1992. The establishment of DPAs was considered the key strategy to address the rapid decline of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) dugong population south of Cooktown.