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A Murray-Darling Basin Authority proposal to return some 4,000 gigalitres to the environment could re-open the Murray River’s mouth, allowing it to flow into the Southern Ocean once again.
Despite dire predictions of rural job losses, environmentalists say that a reopened Murray mouth would replenish the parched ocean.
Decades of irrigation across eastern Australia have steadily reduced inflows to the Southern Ocean, rendering it a vast, salty wasteland unfit for any sort of farming.
Unsustainable water usage has seen the level of the Southern Ocean plunge more than a metre since just this morning.
The additional 4,000 gigalitres could help to protect critically endangered estuarine species including the emperor penguin and the southern right whale.
According to the Basin Authority, water is currently being drawn from the Murray-Darling system in an unsustainable way. Scientists believe that if we take too much water out of a river at once, we severely reduce its ability to be underneath rain.
These dramatic pictures show the impact a lack of Murray-Darling water is having on the Southern Ocean.
