Bushfire impact on the ocean

Photo taken by Thayanne Lima Barros and used with permission.

The Australian bushfires of 2019-2020 were unprecedented in size and severity, however still very little is understood about how bushfires have affected (and continue to affect) aquatic environments.

OceanWatch Australia invites you to participate in their nationwide survey.

Survey responses will form a collection of observations about the impact of bushfires on aquatic wildlife and habitats (e.g. wetlands, rivers, estuaries, coasts, open waters), as well as impacts on social/economic activities reliant on aquatic environments.

The more survey results, the greater will be our understanding of these impacts, and the more information we will have to guide bushfire recovery intervention in the future.

Completion of the survey should take around 10 mins. A $50 Gift Card will be randomly drawn each month for those who assist us in our data collection. The survey closes in June 2021.

This survey is part of a wider OceanWatch project called “Spatial Thinking: Mitigation of bushfire impacts on our marine environment”, the goal of which is to increase the resilience of aquatic, and particularly marine ecosystems to the impacts of future bushfire events.