Yorke Peninsula Coastal Forum

Yorke Peninsula Coastal Forum, 3 – 4 November 2022

The South Australian branch of the Australian Coastal Society (ACS) held a regional Coastal Forum at Marion Bay on the Yorke Peninsula on the 3rd – 4th of November, 2022. It was organised by Professor Patrick Hesp, Associate Professor Graziela Miot da Silva of the Beach and Dune Systems (BEADS) Lab at Flinders University and a committee comprising multiple persons from across Government and Industry including Nicole Pelton and Kym Gerner (DEW), Warwick Noble (EPA), Faith Coleman (Ecoprotem), Damian Moroney (Green Adelaide), Mark Western (Integrated Coasts), Adam Gray (SACCA), Jacqueline Balston, and Angela Gackle, aided by Stephen (Goldy) Goldsworthy of the Yorke Peninsula Council, Arron Broom (DEW), and Ph.D students of the BEADS Lab (Charlotte Uphues, Ben Perry and Marcio DaSilva). It was sponsored by the Yorke Peninsula Council, the Department of Environment and Water Coast Protection Board, ACS, the EPA, College of Science and Engineering (Flinders University), BEADS Lab (Flinders), and the Northern and Yorke Landscape Board. The Forum was very successful attracting 80 participants from all areas of Government, Councils, community organisations and the public.

It promoted a very wide range of talks and interactions after a long period where such interactions were severely restricted due to Covid, and was uniformly highly regarded for its organisation, and plethora of talks across a wide range of subjects and disciplines. A half day fieldtrip took participants around the Southern Yorke Peninsula and examined coastal erosion issues at Foul Bay, Point Turton, and Dunns Point, a coastal plant nursery, and a variety of management issues and solutions in the Formby Bay region.

It was an outstanding forum with a plethora of interesting speakers and topics covering a wide range of coastal issues including beach replenishment options and dune movement, sewage from coastal developments, impacts of  coastal coastal development, shack issues, coastal dune dynamics and evolution, hooded plovers threats and management, invasive weeds  management, machine learning for habitat assessment (AI), coastal hydrodynamics and the impact on dredging in regional areas, sea-level rise predictions, blue carbon storage and microplastic pollution along the metropolitan coast.