Aquatic and Coastal Environmental Sciences Lab, Macquarie University - School of Natural Sciences – A/Prof Katherine Dafforn (katherine.dafforn@mq.edu.au)
We recently welcomed new MRes student Aiden Hose to the lab who is working on a project co-supervised by Dr Anthony Chariton (check out Anthony’s profile as keynote speaker at the SETAC AU 2023 conference ) and Dr Ana Bugnot in collaboration with Sydney Water. Aiden is investigating the biodiversity benefits from Sydney Water’s storm drain channel naturalisation program. This program involves the removal of concrete from the channels and revegetation of banks. Stay tuned for more information when he wraps up at the end of the year.
 Stormwater has been a major focus for our lab group for a number of years and Luke Walker continues this research by investigating the end-of-pipe impacts from stormwater discharges on seagrass meadows in Lake Macquarie.
Annemie-Rose Janssen also joined the lab in late 2022 to undertake a Master by Research program and has been investigating phenotypic variation in the golden kelp Eklonia radiata in response to urban stressors.
Giulia Filippini is a PhD student co-supervised by Dr Ana Bugnot who will be handing in her thesis in a few months time. Her work is addressing the impacts that shellfish reefs and surrounding sediments have on biogeochemical cycles, and particularly denitrification. She used a combination of literature review and meta-analysis, field and lab experiments. Her work has been supported by The Nature Conservancy, NSW DPI, NSW DPE and the Sydney Institute of Marine Science will hand in her PhD thesis in just a few months time.
Investigating phenotypic variation in kelp
Measuring biogeochemical cycles on oyser reefs
Naturalised and unnaturalised stormwater channels
ANSTO Environmental Toxicology and Radioecology team – Dr Tom Cresswell (tom.cresswell@ansto.gov.au)
Tom, Francesca and Alexandra have been busy playing with new toys. This month we installed three new instruments the Millennium Merlin, Excalibur and an HPLC for the low-level detection (ppt) and speciation measurements of mercury, arsenic and selenium (see pic below). It is early days, but we are excited to get these instruments up and running in our lab and apply these capabilities to a range of research projects.
Danielle has been conducting dietary and aqueous exposures of mercury and selenium to tadpoles of Striped Marsh Frog using radiotracers to understand mixture effects, bioaccumulation kinetics and biodistribution.
Francesca and Alexandra have developed a method to synthesis radioactive mercuric sulfide (b-HgS). This will be used in upcoming studies comparing the uptake and accumulation of different forms of mercury in marine invertebrates.Â
Francesca Gissi in the lab radiolabelling sediments with mercuric sulfide.
TEM image confirming synthesis of mercuric sulfide nanoparticles (courtesy of Daniel Oldfield, ANSTO).
Amy has completed a study on assessing the bioavailability of NORMs from marine sediments by invertebrates and has some exciting data and images from the Australian Synchrotron's XFM beamline at the Townsville conference!
Francesca, Alexandra, Danielle and Tom will be presenting at the Mercury Australia symposium in Townsville in Canberra in July. The team will also be attending the SETAC-U conference in Townsville. We can’t wait for a week of great science (and the dance floor, of course).
Opportunities: The group are keen to collaborate with other SETAC-AU members on novel studies assessing the risk of various forms of mercury and naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORMs) from subsea oil and gas pipelines to marine organisms. The team are having regular discussions with regulators of offshore oil and gas operations in Australia, who urgently need data on the potential effects of chronic exposure to low radiological doses (from NORMs) and mercury to marine organisms, especially benthic organisms. We have a range of projects available for Honours, Masters and PhD projects. Please contact Tom to discuss further.
New publications from the group:
Koppel, D. J., Cresswell, T., MacIntosh, A., von Hellfeld, R., Hastings, A. and Higgins, S. (2023). Threshold values for the protection of marine ecosystems from NORM in subsea oil and gas infrastructure. Journal of Environmental Radioactivity; 258: 107093 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvrad.2022.107093.
Koppel, D. J., Gissi, F., Oluwoye, I. and Cresswell, T. (2023). Do we know enough to make future-proofed decisions about contaminants when decommissioning offshore oil and gas infrastructure? The APPEA Journal; 63: S309-S314 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ22173.
Watson, S. M., McLean, D. L., Balcom, B. J., Birchenough, S. N. R., Brand, A. M., Camprasse, E. C. M., Claisse, J. T., Coolen, J. W. P., Cresswell, T., Fokkema, B., Gourvenec, S., Henry, L.-A., Hewitt, C. L., Love, M. S., MacIntosh, A. E., Marnane, M., McKinley, E., Micallef, S., Morgan, D., Nicolette, J., Ounanian, K., Patterson, J., Seath, K., Selman, A. G. L., Suthers, I. M., Todd, V. L. G., Tung, A. and Macreadie, P. I. (2023). Offshore decommissioning horizon scan: Research priorities to support decision-making activities for oil and gas infrastructure. Science of The Total Environment; 878: 163015 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163015.
CSIRO Environment, Lucas Heights, Contaminant Effects and Risk Assessment Team - Lisa Golding (lisa.golding@csiro.au)
Lisa Golding, has been deriving default marine water guidelines for arsenic and manganese and continuing to work on deriving site-specific guidelines for Norfolk Island and New Caledonia for nutrients and metals, respectively.
Jenny Stauber, together with Adam Ryan (International Zinc Association), organised a workshop on the derivation and implementation of freshwater bioavailability-based guidelines for metals at Rydges Cronulla, in Sydney on April 28. Thirty invited scientists and regulators from New Zealand and Australia enthusiastically participated after a welcome dinner the night before. The workshop was preceded by a gathering the day before for the toxicants working group to help reach consensus on the best approach for guideline implementation.
The objectives of the workshop were to:
A series of presentations focused on why and how bioavailability-based guidelines are needed, followed by discussion of several options for implementation. A tiered approach was recommended, with adjustment of sample dissolved metals for water chemistry parameters or adjustment of the guideline value to match the water chemistry. A proposal for funding the development and implementation of the tiered framework was presented to the Metals Environment Research Associations (MERA) at the SETAC Europe meeting in Dublin. While there was strong support, it is likely that additional funding will be needed to fully implement the approach.
A report with more details of the workshop is available from Jenny on request (jenny.stauber@csiro.au). We thank IZA for the generous sponsorship of this workshop and all the participants who made our first face-to-face event so enjoyable.
 
Some of the late night workshop participants
Monique Binet has published research done in collaboration with Mandy Reichelt-Brushett (Southern Cross University) and AIMS at the Seasim facility back in 2018. They generated high quality acute toxicity data, from flow-through experiments to provide the first definitive published data to support the hypothesis put forward by two earlier studies that adult scleractinian corals are particularly sensitive to manganese. Acute toxicity of manganese to Acropora muricata was observed at dissolved concentrations well below those reported to cause acute and chronic toxicity to other marine species and to other coral life stages. To enable assessment for degrees of tissue loss, they developed a health index chart for Acropora muricata.