Gladstone Healthy Harbour Partnership

Gladstone Harbour: A working port rich in marine resources

QUEENSLAND'S LARGEST MULTI-COMMODITY PORT

THE GLADSTONE HEALTHY HARBOUR PARTNERSHIP (GHHP) IS PROUD TO RELEASE THE

2021 Gladstone Harbour Report Card

The Gladstone Healthy Harbour Partnership (GHHP) presents its seventh annual report card to the community and stakeholders. The 2021 Gladstone Harbour Report Card contains the results calculated using 33 indicators derived from 107 different measures within the four components of harbour health: Environment, Economic, Social, and Cultural.

Monitoring since 2014 has shown that some indicators are stable from year to year. Because of this stability, some assessments will now be done every third or fifth year. For the 2021 Report Card, Social, Cultural, Economic and Mangroves were not assessed. For these indicators, the 2019 results, and in the case of Cultural Heritage, the 2018 results have been carried over to 2021.

Overall, the Gladstone Harbour Report Card 2021 grade results were: Environmental health of Gladstone Harbour, good (B); Cultural health of Gladstone Harbour, satisfactory (C); Social health of Gladstone Harbour, good (B); and the Economic health of Gladstone Harbour, good (B).

2021 the second consecutive year that the Environmental component grade was good (B), but it is also the second time since monitoring and reporting began that the water quality grade was very good (A).

WANT TO
KNOW MORE?

The GHHP Education Resource Kit contains activities and assessment pieces that form part of the school curriculum for students from prep to grade 12.

The kit aims to provide students of all ages with an understanding of the health testing taking place in the Gladstone Harbour.

Inside the 2021 GHHP Technical Report

The 2021 GHHP Technical Report provides a comprehensive overview of the 2021 Gladstone Harbour Report Card and contains the complete results for all report card components, Environmental, Social, Cultural and Economic.

The technical report explains the drivers and pressures that could influence the results and includes the methodologies employed to collect data and calculate the final grades and scores.

A full overview (including maps) of the areas in which monitoring for all four report card components was conducted is also provided.

Inside the 2021 GHHP Technical Report

The technical report explains the drivers and pressures that could influence the results and includes the methodologies employed to collect data and calculate the final grades and scores.

A full overview (including maps) of the areas in which monitoring for all four report card components was conducted is also provided.

2021 Highlights

The 2021 Gladstone Harbour Report Card had several noteworthy highlights.

The Environmental component was graded as good (B) for the second consecutive year. This was a result of similar grades for the three environmental indicator groups.

Water quality was relatively uniform across the harbour, with 11 of the 13 environmental monitoring zones receiving very good (A) grades. The remaining two zones received a good (B) grade. At the sub-indicator level, physicochemical scores were mostly very good (A), nutrients scores were mostly good (B) and dissolved metal scores were all very good (A)—with nutrient scores improving markedly at most zones compared to the previous year. As a result, this was the second time the water quality indicator received an overall very good (A) grade and the highest score received in the GHHP monitoring program.

The Fish Health indicator is made up of two projects: Visual Fish Health and Fish Health Assessment Index (HAI). In 2021, calculated scores for the Fish HAI show good (B) to very good (A) health of fish across the five target species groups: bream, barred javelin, barramundi, blue catfish and mullet. Fish HAI graded very good (A) in 2021 for the first time, improving from a B grade in the previous two years when it had been assessed.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY

The Gladstone Healthy Harbour Partnership acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and sea in the Port Curtis Coral Coast region, the Gurang, Gooreng Gooreng, Taribelang Bunda and Bailai people, and pays respect to the ancestors, the Elders both past and present, and to the people.