‘Harrowing’: Cyclone Narelle leaves graves for turtles, dolphins and seabirds in Western Australia

As the flooding from Tropical Cyclone Narelle’s violent visit to Exmouth subsided and the winds dropped, Brinkley Davies headed to Graveyards Beach.

The beach, at least according to some Exmouth residents, got its name from the habit of turtles sticking to the dunes.

But by Sunday morning, this remote sandbar off Western Australia had turned into a veritable graveyard, strewn with thousands of baby turtles and turtle eggs alongside dead fish, sea snakes, dolphins and seabirds.

“The number of animals was disturbing. I’m a positive person, but it was really bad. I saved whatever I could,” said Davies.

The national government said there had been similar incidents hundreds of kilometers down the coast of the world heritage-listed Ningaloo coast since Narelle’s passing.

Brooke Pyke, a photographer based in Exmouth, also went to the Graveyards and struggled to contain her emotions as she recounted the scene.

He said: “It’s hard to put into words. It was very stressful.

“My guess is that anything that needed to come to the surface to breathe would have faced intense and exhausting conditions. We didn’t find any sharks or rays – maybe they would go deeper.”

Davies – who makes a living as a scuba diver, occasional stunt double, tour guide and photographer – is the founder of the Balu Blue Foundation, a conservation organization that cares for injured wildlife.

But with no permanent structure in place, Davies welcomed more than 70 seabirds and other animals into her home and driveway in the days after the hurricane.

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He said many of the birds were “very far away”, but along with more than 20 other volunteers they were nursed back to health and released.

“I hope from this, it at least shows that we need a permanent facility here [to care for wildlife]. It’s crazy what we’ve just been through,” said Davies.

Many people have said that this is just nature.

The storm of history

Cyclone Narelle was the first storm to make landfall in three different areas since Tropical Cyclone Ingrid in 2005.

Climate experts say global warming may have helped the storm intensify before it made landfall.

After moving thousands of kilometers north of Australia, the storm was a strong category four system when it passed Exmouth, giving strong winds of about 250km/h.

Riley Carter, wildlife officer at the WA Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, said hundreds of shorebirds had been found dead on beaches near Exmouth and the Ningaloo coast and about 30 dead cetaceans had been reported.

“We’ve had reports of dead turtles, dolphins, snakes and other wildlife along hundreds of kilometers of coastline,” he said.

There were “immediate and significant animal welfare impacts” and helicopters were being used to assess the situation, with vets available to euthanise animals if necessary, Carter said.

He said there are positive signs, including 19 new turtle tracks that have been seen since the hurricane passed.

Fear of corals

Narelle’s path took the storm straight to the northern reaches of the Ningaloo coast and its coral reefs.

Last year, two-thirds of Ningaloo’s coral reefs died after an unprecedented high tide caused the worst-ever coral bleaching event for more than 1,000km of the WA coast.

Dr James Gilmour, a senior research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, said cyclones can bury corals in soil, making them more vulnerable to disease.

The massive die-off of aquatic plants and animals also increased the risk of algal blooms that can damage corals.

“All parts of the reef can be uplifted and the coral can be scarred and sandblasted or buried in the hills,” he said.

Narelle’s arrival on Ningaloo came when the corals were in the middle of their breeding season.

“Corals use a lot of energy to produce their leaves, and that happens over many months.

He said: “The corals will be greatly reduced in strength and therefore the ability of the polyps to remove sediment is greatly reduced.”

Gilmour said any Ningaloo corals that did not die in dark masses last year were weakened by the event. There was a possibility that the remaining corals would have died after the typhoon.

“[Narelle] it’s another fatality and it really makes us worry,” he said.

“We’re still worried about the recovery windows. You need five or 10 years and we’re very worried about how long these windows are going to be.”