What the HAB event raises, given the long-term ecological damage to the Great Southern Reef ecosystems, is the need to invest in marine and reef habitat restoration in order to rebuild ecological resilience.
Faith Coleman argues that restoring seagrass meadows, mangroves, and saltmarsh habitats. She highlights that healthy seagrass acts as a natural control mechanism for blooms by fostering microbes that fight off harmful algae.
Apparently, there has been the loss of about 5,000 hectares of seagrass along the metropolitan coastline mainly due to stormwater flows. Storm water is just flushed way into the sea.
The reason that sediment loads discharged from urban stormwater drains killing off seagrass meadows, is particularly important is because these meadows can prevent blooms by hosting bacteria and viruses that kill it and other dinoflagellates.
Local councils need to build rain gardens, stormwater treatment wetlands, permeable paving and better designed streetscapes that could reduce stormwater run-off. They will need help from the state and federal governments to be able do this.
Unfortunately the SA state government is currently interested in the short term economic considerations (tourism, aquaculture etc ) with respect to HAB, and not the long-term ecological ones that build resilence.