Algal Bloom

Mr BASHAM (Finniss) (15:25): My question again is to the Minister for Environment. Has the government employed any emergency response field officers to help with the algal bloom clean-up and, if so, how many?

The Hon. L.P. HOOD (Adelaide—Minister for Climate, Environment and Water) (15:25): In terms of our beach clean-ups they are occurring at around 23 sites, I am advised, across South Australia. We have the disaster relief teams that are working to undertake those clean-ups and obviously we have been doing that in partnership with councils. We thank them for that important work.

We understand that it is quite distressing for South Australians to see the impact that the harmful algal bloom has had on our marine life. We know that our beaches are a place to which people go for reflection and timeout from the hustle and bustle, in particular, for their mental health. So, to see our marine life in distress, or our oceans struggling, can be difficult and that is why we have invested in information sources for people to be able to get advice around their mental health.

The beach clean-ups are an important tool in managing our harmful algal bloom and what we have been able to do is utilise those resources for the rollout of the Beachsafe app upgrade, so using those important people heading out to our beaches every morning to undertake that clean-up and to do that observation of our coastline so we can feed that information into the Beachsafe app.

As I was earlier indicating, there are those three key pieces of information around whether abnormal foam is present, whether or not there is discoloured water, and when the beach was cleaned. At the same time a photo is then taken of the beach. I am advised that we will look to update that around twice a day before we do head towards more regular updates. I want to thank all of the groups that have been part of those daily clean-ups of our beaches and I know it is an incredible task to undertake. I am more than happy to provide any further information for the member.