2021-09-13 GC Agenda - Item 11 - Attachment 1 - Noosa Oyster Project Annual Report 2

    •     Request for Quotation and Construction contract development, and

    •     Signing up of 10+ oyster gardeners and rolling out of 3 community partnership projects.


Reef Builder
In January 2021, TNC launched the Australia-wide Reef Builder initiative. The initiative aims to bring shellfish reef
ecosystems back from the brink of extinction across Australia– for the benefit of both people and nature. The initiative
is a partnership between the Australian Government and TNC.

For Noosa, Reef Builder means a cash injection of an additional $1.2m for reef building on top of the already $1.2m
already committed to the project from TNC and the Thomas Foundation. The additional Reef Builder funds means the
project can restore an additional one hectare of oyster reefs in Noosa on top of the one hectare the project is already
restoring in partnership with Noosa Shire Council and The Thomas Foundation.


Unforeseen issues arising and project adaptation
The following were unseen and required an adaptive management response:

Data acquisition

The shallow tidal and intertidal areas of the Noosa River estuary were largely uncharted. TNC therefore had to work
collaboratively with Maritime Safety Queensland’s (MSQ) hydrographic survey team to select the right consultant for
this work to ensure the project’s mapping outputs met with Queensland Government requirements. This took time.

Further, the hydrographic surveyors met with high levels of summer boating, bouts of poor weather and challenging
tides during the surveys. Vessels were often moored in survey sites or generated waves which made underwater
surveying challenging. The work was originally forecast to take two weeks but took 12 weeks in total to complete.

Multiple agencies have assets in the Noosa River including cross river cables, sewage pipes, electricity lines and
telecommunication cables. It took four months to uncover the owners of all these assets and to acquire the necessary
data sets and regulatory requirements regarding each.

The Noosa River is also fringed by multiple land tenures, infrastructure assets (private and public) as well as multiple
in water uses (moorings, commercial charter operations, ferry services, recreational uses). Designing restoration
parameters which took account of the multitude of user interests required extensive investigation and assessment.
Originally forecast to take three months, this work took nine months to complete.

Permits

Due to the unique nature of this development (i.e., there is no state or local code which specifically covers marine
restoration) and multiple layers of tenure and environmental protection over the river, the project faced multiple
permitting considerations, which have led to delays in permitting and construction.

These considerations demanded the development of sophisticated restoration and site management plans, detailed
risk assessments, multiple regulatory code and environmental assessments, ecological mapping, and site engineering,
as well as multiple contingency measures for the construction and site management phases.




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