Beneath the kanamaluka/Tamar estuary's surface is a marine wonderland that most people have never seen or understood.
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The estuary's complex ecosystem is the focus of a new display at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery and will form the basis of a public lecture.
QVMAG knowledge and content manager Christine Hansen will lead the lecture and said the estuary had a firm hold on the community, but most people didn't know much about it.
"A lot of people just don't understand just how extraordinary this waterway is and we, as the museum, want to help people to understand it and to tell the stories of the estuary," she said.
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Dr Hansen said the museum wanted to inform the public about the complex nature of the estuarine system and hoped to do that through this lecture and the exhibition.
The exhibition's feature is an aerial photograph of the estuary taken along its whole length, blown up and placed on the wall. Dr Hansen said residents did not sufficiently understand the estuary's sheer scale, but using the map helped people understand just how complex a system it is simply by seeing the scale.
"Often the debate around the estuary is about this very small part here," she said, pointing to the area around Launceston.
"But as you can see, the system is so complex and large, when you see all 70 kilometres of it ... so anything you do down there will have an effect further up the estuary."
Dr Hansen said she didn't want to enter into the public debate about what to do with Tamar's sediment, a source of community angst for decades.
However, she said the museum wanted to ensure the public were as well informed as possible if they wanted to enter the debate. Dr Hansen had worked at the QVMAG for three years but said that she was immediately taken by it when she first arrived here.
"I immediately just thought 'that's it, that's our story]," she said.
Since igniting her passion for telling the estuary's stories, Dr Hansen said she was taken aback by its complexity and the forces of nature that govern it.
"It's tidal, so the function is for it to be a mix of fresh and saltwater, and it flushes in and out with the tide ... it has it's own seasons, and one of those is a high-water season, but we would call it flood."
Dr Hansen described the estuary as a "holistic organism" governed by its management system of tidal flows and sediment build-up.
The public lecture will be held on April 25 at QVMAG. Due to COVID restrictions, registration will be required for the QVMAG lecture - phone 0417 330 118 or email apcachris@gmail.com. For Zoom webinar, register at rst.org.au
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