"Worse than an oil spill"

  This is how Professor Gee Chapman describes the environmental impact of cementing Clovelly Beach & Australia's coastline.

Hi, my name is Zoe Reynolds & my mission is to get rid of the concrete covering Clovelly Bay on Sydney's eastern beaches - or at least some of it!

I invited Professor Gee Chapman, a global expert on the environmental impact of artificial shorelines to speak on the issues driving this project.

Prof Chapman says hundreds of species may have disappeared from the intertidal shores of Clovelly Bay by covering their habitat with cement. It may also have helped spread an outbreak of algea in the summer.

 “An oil spill is a transient event. An oil spill looks terrible, but the number of animals killed is not usually excessive and populations can soon recover," she says. "When you remove habitat, including intertidal rocky shores, habitat for many species has gone and it has gone forever."

The marine life that lived on the intertidal shores of Clovelly is not extinct - not yet.  They live on other shores in Clovelly, in NSW and elsewhere, Professor Chapman stresses.  Increasing concreting the Australian shoreline, however, will remove more and more habitat for these species and they will face extinction.  

I've been snorkling up & down the bay with my camera the past year capturing underwater images of the spread of algae on the seabed &  the waves colliding with concrete above for my upcoming exhibition The Dying Bay. 

“If the walls increase action and water movement, this could disturb the bottom of the bay," says Prof Chapman.  "These fast-growing, short-lived algae really do well in disturbed conditions.  The waves will also rip it up from the bottom, so it floats about.   And that will help it spread and when it dies, it will become slimy. " 

Award winning local photographer Greg Weight is supporting my exhibition with his "Red Tide Clovelly" series of the 2012 algal bloom that turned the bay the colour of blood.

We hope to raise community awareness of how damaging artificial shorelines can be & push for change.

What can we do to #SaveClovellyBay? 

Professor Chapman has helped develop eco engineering for seawalls with other scientists & ways to modify walls already in place, here & abroad. 

It can be done.

If you live in Randwick do contact council
or your local councillor and register your concern.

With rising seas more & more money is being spent on armoring our shores.  Let's do it right.

Pledge to this project now and let's make this happen!

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Help fund some of the costs of this exhibition by pledging to buy some prints.  The more I raise the more leaflets, posters and letterboxing I can do.  

This is just the beginning!

Gallery hire: $1200

Photographic prints $1,400

Media, publicity $500

waterproof camera gear hire refund  $350

Getting council to consider removing or modifying the cement prominade will be the biggest challenge to come

For starters we want council to commission a scientific study of the algae & the impact of the concrete in the bay.

It's local government elections so the campaign is timed to create some momentum for change & pledges from cadidates to get things moving - not just in Randwick, but all along the coast