Dead mangrove debris ‘preventing shoreline recovery’

Aerial surveys reveal that dead wood is hindering plant growth in Gulf of Carpentaria

Massive rafts of drifting mangrove logs are smothering and destroying plant growth over thousands of kilometres along the Gulf of Carpentaria, according to aerial surveys by James Cook University in northern Queensland.

Norman Duke, who leads the university’s national environmental science programme on mangrove dieback, says the mangrove logs are creating piles of drifting timber up to two metres high in some areas.