In Hot Water
Cancel culture is alive and well – but 30,000 marine creatures are not.
As regular readers will know, we’re always talking about Seven West Media. Last week they returned the favour, blasting Greens MLC Brad Pettitt and independent candidate for Fremantle Kate Hulett for appearing on the podcast. The WA government got in on the act, with Environment Minister Reece Whitby saying he hoped even the Greens would distance themselves from us (instead Brad doubled down and called us “young”). Hasn’t the Minister heard that cancel culture is over and the smartest thing a politician can do is hang out with problematic podcasters? (If he changes his mind, there’s always a spare spot on the couch.)
This long weekend, we’re coming to you live from the beautiful Pilbara – home to the oldest artwork on Earth, the engine room of the national economy and, right now, extremely hot and wet. Earlier this week, Tropical Cyclone Sean dropped 270mm of rain in a few hours. The country is greener than I’ve ever seen it, there are lakes where I remember red dirt before, but above all, it’s really bloody steamy. When your sunnies fog up just walking outside you know the humidity is sticking around and you’ll be sweating through another few shirts today.
And that’s before you even get in the water. The ocean around Karratha is always a bit of a bath, but when we pulled off the North West Coastal Highway and straight down to Hearson’s Cove for a dip upon arrival, the water was actively warm. Marine temperatures off the North West coast have been elevated for months, and right now the heat map looks like a big swirling bloodstain off the Pilbara coast, but it’s just been raised to a Category Three marine heatwave (to go with the Cat 3 cyclone last weekend) and you don’t have to travel far for the likely consequences. Last fortnight, 30,000 dead fish, octopus and turtles washed off at 40 Mile Beach (Gnoorea) just down the coast.
Earlier that week, I was caught in the midst of the metropolitan equivalent when I tried (and failed) to raise the alarm about dead mackerel washing up at Coogee Beach south of Freo. Despite early speculation about a chemical spill (lots of industry down that way), the Department came back and blamed a broken trawler net for the mass death (unexplained: why does a broken net kill all the fish it caught?). Locals I’ve spoken to up here have suggested other options for the Karratha kill, including the blasting and dredging of the Port of Dampier to make room for Perdaman’s urea exports, but this afternoon the Department pointed towards the obvious – the ocean seems too damn hot for fish to survive.
“In recent weeks, marine heatwave conditions affecting Western Australia’s Northwest and Gascoyne bioregions reached a Category Three rating, which indicates a severe event,” the Executive Director for Fisheries told The Last Place On Earth.
While emphasising that their investigation is ongoing, they did allow that “it is possible that prolonged thermal stress due to the ocean conditions is associated with the fish kill.”
“Following the recent tropical cyclone, the marine heatwave strength has declined, however we are moving into the higher risk summer months,” they added ominously.
Given that coral bleaching has already been observed in Broome this summer and the fish deaths are apparently moving further south down the WA coast, it looks like the oceans may be more on fire than our bush is this summer. It’s also worth noting, of course, that if the Perdaman project didn’t kill them, the rest of Woodside’s Burrup Hub probably contributed a few degrees. And while fish are washing up on the doorstep of WA’s gas industry, it’s worth noting that it can’t even keep the lights on at home.
Out in Roebourne, where we’ve also spent some time this week, power outages are a regular event - but, strangely, they never seem to strike just down the road in Karratha, and out on the Burrup itself the big projects get priority access to new power lines. Meanwhile, the people whose country gets carved up to run the cables and clear the shipping lanes are barely able to run an air conditioner as real temperatures in Roebourne push 50 degrees again this week. So if you were sweltering in South Freo this weekend, spare a thought for those at Roebourne Prison, where the promised air con upgrade is still yet to eventuate, another scorching summer later. It doesn’t take a pole top fire to kill the power in Roebourne - just generations of being overlooked and ignored while their ngurra generates billions for big companies, another systemic injustice that deserves far more scrutiny than it gets.
