Petition to save critically endangered Victorian dolphins

A PETITION for a federal Parliamentary inquiry has been launched to protect dolphins and other marine life from the harmful impacts of long-lasting pollutants such as PFAS, microplastics, and other contaminants in the water.

The Clean Ocean Foundation petition comes after critically endangered Burrunan dolphins in Victorian waters were found with the highest concentrations of PFAS chemicals in dolphins reported anywhere in the world.

Clean Ocean Foundation chief executive officer and chemical engineer John Gemmill said there were too many unknowns when it came to ocean pollution in Victoria.

“We’ve got a blizzard of microplastics entering the ocean from outfalls up and down Bellarine and the Surf Coast.

“For years we have been saying there is a concerning lack of control of PFAS from lots of different sources including ocean outfalls.”

“There are no standards on how much PFAS you can discharge, and it’s the same for microplastics.”

The joint study by scientists from the Marine Mammal Foundation, RMIT, and Melbourne University found high concentrations of the chemicals – widely used in food packaging, firefighting foam, and non-stick cookware and sometimes called “forever chemicals” for not breaking down – in Victoria’s critically endangered Burrunan dolphins.

The research found that average concentrations of some chemicals in these populations were more than ten times higher than what scientists believe causes liver toxicity and a range of health issues.

One juvenile Burrunan dolphin from Port Phillip Bay had a PFAS liver concentration of 19,500 nanograms per gram – the highest level recorded in an individual dolphin globally.

Study lead author Chantel Foord said the results were both highly concerning and globally significant.

“Not only did we find the highest levels of these man-made toxicants in a species that’s already critically endangered, including in newborn and juveniles, we also found one dolphin from Port Phillip Bay with PFAS concentrations almost 30 per cent higher than any other individual dolphin reported globally.

There has been a renewed global push to address microplastics in 2024 after a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in January found that the average bottle of water contained 240,000 tiny plastic pieces. These nanoplastics were found to be so small that they can enter the bloodstream, cells, and organs.

Major sources of microplastics and PFAS in the aquatic environment have been attributed to manufacturing effluent, wastewater treatment plant discharge, urban and landfill run-off.

While there is international regulation for some of these chemicals, Australia has yet to ratify the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in full.

View the petition details here.