Corals of the Dampier Harbour: Their Survival and Reproduction During the Dredging Programs of 2004

The Port of Dampier on Western Australia’s Pilbara Coast is one of the largest tonnage ports in Australia and an important base for the North-West Shelf oil and gas industry. In response to expanding opportunities for resource development in the region, two proposals involving dredging of new berths and channels to increase port capacity went before the Western Australian Environmental Protection Authority in 2003. As a result of the environmental impact assessment of these proposals, a number of studies of the marine environment were commissioned to be carried out in conjunction with the dredging and spoil disposal activities proposed.

Over the period November 2003 to December 2004, MScience undertook a variety of studies to provide environmental input into the real-time management of dredging and spoil disposal. These studies provide a valuable insight into the ecology of coral communities in the turbid inshore marine environments of Dampier Harbour and how they react to a variety of natural and dredging-related impacts.

The proponents of the two dredging campaigns that occurred in 2004
Dampier Port Authority (DPA): 8 January – 20 May 2004; and
Hamersley Iron Pty Limited (HI): 8 May – 23 October 2004
felt that the results of these studies should be made public to assist in future assessments of dredging projects around inshore coral communities on the Pilbara Coast or elsewhere and have produced a technical publication documenting the studies and their results.

Publication available for download –
(requires Adobe Reader)

This publication should be cited as:

Stoddart, JA and SE Stoddart (Eds) 2005. Corals of the Dampier Harbour: Their Survival and Reproduction During the Dredging Programs of 2004. MScience Pty Ltd, Perth WA, 78pp.