Port Phillip Bay Monitoring Programs and Results

Port Phillip Bay Monitoring Programs

Photo: Inspecting a logger used to monitor Port Phillip Bay water quality. Courtesy of DPI.

Aerial photo of Port Phillip Bay and Melbourne CBD

Port Phillip Bay attracts more than 40 million visitors a year and is home to more than 3.5 million people; making it Australia’s most intensively used coastal water body.

The Bay is of significant social, economic and environmental value to Victoria. Therefore, the Bay’s health is important to the communities and businesses living and operating along its shoreline and to the marine life that rely on its health to survive.

To avoid, minimise and control the environmental effects to the Bay from dredging, a set of rules were developed to control when, where and how dredging could be delivered during the Channel Deepening Project.

Supporting these rules was a suite of more than 20 environmental monitoring programs that collected information on the Bay’s health from 2008 to 2011.

The programs aimed to keep a close watch on the Bay’s ‘vital signs’ and each program examined different aspects of the Bay’s health. The programs included ongoing monitoring of the Bay and monitoring that was specifically designed to minimise and manage the environmental effects of the Project on the Bay.

More than 200 ‘vital sign’ indicators were monitored on timescales ranging from every minute for indicators that respond quickly, through to daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually, for changes that happen more slowly.

The information from the monitoring programs was assessed by the Office to inform its judgement on the overall environmental performance of the Channel Deepening Project.

For more information and results from the monitoring programs operating across the Bay click on the links below.

Water Quality:

Water Quality Monitoring Program

Beach Monitoring Program

Turbidity Monitoring Program

Plume Intensity & Extent Monitoring Program

Nutrient Cycling Monitoring Program

Algal Blooms Monitoring Program

Water Quality in Port Phillip & Westernport Catchment Monitoring Program

Bacterial Contamination in the Yarra River Monitoring Program

Plants and Animals:

Little Penguins Monitoring Program

Seagrass Monitoring Program