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Monitoring is the
observation of a situation to detect changes over time. The Inshore Fish
Group encourages the community monitoring of a number of locations across
southern Australia. Long- term monitoring of a number of locations will show the
fluctuations in the diversity and abundance of fish over southern Australia.
This information combined with records of environmental variations as
stressors such as siltation, pollution, disease, climate variation, or the invasion of exotic species, would show the effect of these
changes on fish.
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The crowd at the unveiling included Dr. Scorseby Shepherd, a pioneer in
the conservation of the marine environment of Southern Australasia.
Dr Shepherd won the Order of Australia in 2006, for his work towards the
understanding and conservation of marine environment.

The renewed optimism for the rehabilitation of our precious marine
environments was recently shown by the unveiling of a sculpture at Grange,
Holdfast Bay, South Australia. The sculpture was a sea eagle (Haliaeetus
leucogaster). Sea eagles were once found around the entire
coastline of Australia and were very common in bays, gulfs and inlets
across Southern Australasia. They were often seen flying along the
metropolitan beaches of Holdfast Bay in front of Adelaide.
Unfortunately, the sea eagles have now been eradicated from the region.
Problems with the deliberate destruction of sea eagles persisted until the
mid nineteen nineties in the Derwent Estuary, Tasmania, Australia, when
many were deliberately shot.
The marine environment behind the eagle has been highly degraded by
effluent and by run off from the city and suburbs of Adelaide.
Perhaps if this habitat is restored the sea eagle will once again soar
proudly over Holdfast Bay. |