Editorial - Virtual special issue (VSI) green turtles as silent sentinels of pollution in the Great Barrier Reef- Rivers to Reef to Turtles project

摘要

The World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef (GBR) marine park covers an area of 344,400 km~2 along the coast of northeast Australia. It receives freshwater run-off from 35 river catchments from 424,000 km~2 of land, largely modified from its natural state. These catchments transport sediments, nutrients, natural and anthropogenic chemical contaminants from agricultural, industrial, mining and urban activities, resulting in elevated contaminant loads and subsequent decreased water quality in the GBR lagoon (Brodie et al., 2012). Degraded water quality from catchment run-off has long been known to be an issue for the GBR (GBRMPA, 2019), with both State and Federal governments committing hundreds of millions of dollars to address it over the last 15 years, with projects to date largely focussing on sediments, nutrients and pesticides (Commonwealth of Australia, 2015). The UNESCO 2017 State of Conservation report (UNESCO, 2017) recognised the role of water pollution as a key threat to the GBR ecosystem, but while the northeast Australian waterways are monitored using traditional water quality measures (nutrients, sediments, pesticides) and coral and seagrass cover assessments (e.g. Warne et al., 2020), there is currently no routine monitoring of the impacts of other contaminants, including new or emerging chemicals on the ecosystems and wildlife of the GBR (Kroon et al., 2020).