Take Action for Pumicestone Passage - TAPP Inc

06/09/2026

Hello and welcome to all our new followers! 👋

We are Take Action for Pumicestone Passage - TAPP Inc!

A community-led environmental organisation working to protect and enhance the Pumicestone Passage, its catchment and surrounding communities.

Our work is guided by four core objectives:

🏛️ Governance + strategic advocacy
🔬 Water quality + scientific monitoring
🌿 Conservation + environmental stewardship
🤝 Community education + engagement

From protecting biodiversity and monitoring our waterways to advocating for responsible planning and creating opportunities for our community to take action — everything we do is grounded in these four objectives.

🌊 Our Monday motivation?

To keep showing up, speaking up and working together for the long-term health of the Pumicestone Passage.

Thank you for following our work and becoming part of our growing community.

06/09/2026

🌊 MEET THE Q&A PANEL | ALISON FOLEY

What if changing our relationship with plastic started with something as simple as picking up ten little pieces?

We’re delighted to welcome Alison Foley, Founder & Director of Ten Little Pieces | Sustainability Education , to our live Q&A panel following the screening of The Plastic Country

Alison’s work is grounded in a wonderfully simple idea: small individual actions can build into meaningful collective change.

Through environmental education and community action, she encourages children, families and communities to look differently at the waste around them — and to recognise that we all have a role to play in protecting the places we love.

At our Q&A, Alison will bring an important perspective to the conversation around:

🌱 Environmental education
🤝 Community action
♻️ Behaviour change
🌊 Turning awareness into everyday action

Because tackling plastic pollution isn’t only about what happens at the end of the pipe or after plastic reaches our waterways.

It’s also about how we stop it getting there in the first place.

🎬 Take Action for Plastic Pollution
The Plastic Country + live community Q&A
📅 Thursday 10 September | 5:30–7:00pm
📍 Caloundra Power Boat Club, Golden Beach
🎟️ FREE community event — registration essential

Come along, watch the film with us, meet Alison and our incredible panel, and be part of the conversation about what we can do — right here in our own community. 💛🌊

05/09/2026

🌊 BREAKING NEWS | SURFRIDER FOUNDATION SUNSHINE COAST IS JOINING US!

We’re very excited to announce that Surfrider Sunshine Coast will be joining us for Take Action for Plastic Pollution this Thursday!

For an event centred on what plastic pollution means for our oceans, waterways and communities, having Surfrider represented in the room adds another important voice to the conversation.

Surfrider Foundation has a long history of protecting our waves, beaches and coastal environments — and their Sunshine Coast branch brings that advocacy right here to our local coastline.

They’ll join an incredible group of people working across:

🌊 Coastal and ocean protection
🔬 Microplastics and monitoring
💧 Stormwater and water quality
♻️ Plastic reduction and prevention
📣 Education and behaviour change
🤝 Community action

And that is exactly what we wanted this event to be — different perspectives, shared knowledge and a community conversation about what we can actually do.

🎬 Take Action for Plastic Pollution
Screening of The Plastic Country + Community Q&A
📅 Thursday 10 September | 5:30–7:00pm
📍 Caloundra Power Boat Club, Golden Beach
🎟️ FREE community event

A huge thank you to Surfrider Foundation Sunshine Coast for coming on board at the eleventh hour. We cannot wait to have you with us! 💙

04/09/2026

🎬 THIS IS THE PLASTIC COUNTRY

Australia is one of the highest users of plastic per person in the world.

Yet plastic pollution can still feel like a problem happening somewhere else.

It isn’t.

The Plastic Country follows filmmaker Kal Glanznig across Australia as he investigates the scale of our plastic crisis — on our shores, in our communities and in the systems behind our everyday use of plastic.

Next Thursday, we’re bringing this important conversation to Golden Beach. 🌊

Join Take Action for Pumicestone Passage - TAPP Inc for a FREE community screening of The Plastic Country, followed by a live Q&A with experts working across plastic pollution, microplastics, water quality, education and behaviour change.

🎬 Take Action for Plastic Pollution
📅 Thursday 10 September
🕠 5:30–7:00pm
📍 Caloundra Power Boat Club, Golden Beach
🎟️ FREE community screening + Q&A

Watch the trailer. Then come and watch the story with us.

Because plastic pollution isn’t happening “out there”.

It’s our water. Our coast. Our community.

04/09/2026

🔬 Meet our Q&A Panel | Trent Brumby

Plastic pollution isn’t always something we can see.

Some of the smallest plastics entering our environment can be among the hardest to understand, monitor and prevent.

Joining our Take Action for Plastic Pollution Q&A Panel is Trent Brumby, Founder & Director of Microplastic Awareness Systems — bringing a hands-on perspective on microplastics, environmental monitoring and community awareness.

Through his work as trent brumby , Trent is helping make the often invisible issue of microplastic pollution something communities can see, understand and take action on.

And that is exactly the kind of conversation we want to have. 🌊

🔬 Microplastics
💧 Monitoring
📣 Awareness

Following our community screening of The Plastic Country, Trent will join our panel to explore what microplastic pollution means for our environment — and how greater awareness and monitoring can help drive change.

📅 Thursday 10 September
🕠 5:30–7:00pm
📍 Caloundra Power Boat Club, Golden Beach
🎟️ FREE community event

Come along. Ask questions. Learn more about what may be entering our waterways — even when we can’t see it.

Because we can’t take action on what we don’t understand.

04/09/2026

💚 STEVE IRWIN — A LEGACY THAT STILL ECHOES

Today marks 20 years since the passing of Steve Irwin.

During Biodiversity Month, we remember not only the wildlife warrior known and loved around the world, but also the passionate conservationist whose life was deeply connected to our Sunshine Coast region and its remarkable wildlife and waterways.

Steve’s dear friend, Brian Coulter, shared these words with us today:

“What we do in life echoes in eternity.”

No more can be said for the legacy that Steve Irwin left behind. He inspired a whole generation of wildlife warriors and still inspires people to get behind the conservation of our beautiful environment and animals — especially here in our region of the Sunshine Coast, Bribie Island and the beautiful Pumicestone Passage.

— Brian Coulter Saltwater Ecology

Twenty years on, Steve’s enthusiasm, courage and unwavering belief that every person can make a difference continue to inspire people across generations.

The greatest tribute we can offer is to continue protecting the wildlife, habitats and waterways he loved so deeply. 💚

📷 Steve Irwin on K’gari, 1995. Photograph courtesy of his dear friend Brian Coulter and shared with permission.

03/09/2026

🌊 BIODIVERSITY MONTH | WHAT LIES BEYOND OUR SHORELINE MATTERS TOO!

And here is some welcome news for our local marine environment:
https://www.sunshinecoastnews.com.au/2026/09/03/offshore-site-ruled-out-for-dredged-sediment-disposal/

Sunshine Coast News has reported that the Northern Deepwater area — approximately 10km east of Caloundra — has now been ruled out as a potential placement site for dredged material from the Port of Brisbane’s proposed Channel Enhancement Project.

For TAPP, this is an important development.

During Biodiversity Month, it is also an opportunity to look beyond the shoreline and consider just how environmentally significant the waters surrounding Caloundra, North Bribie Island and the Pumicestone Passage really are.

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The Pumicestone Passage forms part of the Moreton Bay Marine Park and sits within a much larger interconnected coastal and marine ecosystem supporting seagrass, fish, turtles, dolphins, dugongs and internationally significant shorebird populations.

The wider Moreton Bay area is recognised as a Key Biodiversity Area of international significance, supporting more than 40,000 waders as well as extensive marine biodiversity.

That ecological connectivity matters.

While the proposed offshore dredge-material placement area near Caloundra has now been removed from consideration, the Channel Enhancement Project could still involve deepening and widening sections of the North-West Channel off our coastline.

The proposed project is now undergoing an Environmental Impact Statement process — and this is exactly why comprehensive environmental assessment matters.

Questions around marine ecology, seagrass and benthic habitat, water quality, turbidity, sediment movement, coastal processes and cumulative impacts must remain part of the conversation as the project progresses.

Protecting biodiversity isn't only about protecting individual species or individual places.

It means understanding how our catchments, waterways, coastal habitats and marine environments are connected — from the Pumicestone Passage to Moreton Bay and the waters beyond Caloundra.

TAPP welcomes the removal of the Northern Deepwater placement option and will continue following the EIS process closely.

Because what happens offshore can matter onshore — and what happens upstream can matter downstream.

An area off the Sunshine Coast is no longer being considered as a potential site for placing dredged sediment from a large-scale Port of Brisbane project.

03/09/2026

| Meet Simona Paganetto

What if reducing plastic pollution started with the choices we make every day?

This Thursday, we’re introducing another member of our Take Action for Plastic Pollution Q&A Panel — Simona Paganetto, Founder & Director of I’m Plastic Free.

Simona’s work focuses on something incredibly important: helping people and organisations understand where plastic enters our lives — and how we can meaningfully reduce our reliance on it.

Because tackling plastic pollution isn’t only about cleaning it up once it reaches our beaches and waterways.

It’s also about preventing it at the source.

♻️ Plastic reduction
🌱 Education
💡 Behaviour change

Simona will join our community Q&A following the screening of The Plastic Country, bringing a practical, solutions-focused perspective to the conversation about what individuals, businesses and communities can actually do differently.

📅 Thursday 10 September
🕠 5:30–7:00pm
📍 Caloundra Power Boat Club, Golden Beach
🎟️ FREE community event

Come along, ask questions and be part of the conversation.

Small actions matter. Collective action changes systems.

02/09/2026

🌿 THROWBACK THURSDAY | BIODIVERSITY MONTH 🦋

This Biodiversity Month, we’re revisiting an important presentation from the 2021 Pumicestone Catchment Convergence: Protecting the biodiversity significance and nature conservation values of the Pumicestone Region.

The Pumicestone region is far more than a beautiful waterway.

It forms part of an internationally recognised Ramsar wetland and supports an extraordinary network of waterways, wetlands, saltmarsh, lowland rainforest, coastal habitats and connected forests.

More than 10,000 high-precision records of rare and threatened species have been documented across the region—including dugongs, eastern curlews, koalas, platypus, powerful owls, glossy black-cockatoos, Richmond birdwing butterflies, southern greater gliders and spotted-tailed quolls.

But land-use change, population growth, fire, coastal erosion and habitat fragmentation continue to place these natural values under pressure.

Protecting biodiversity means protecting the whole connected system—from the D’Aguilar and Blackall Ranges, through riparian forests and tributaries, to the wetlands and waters of the Pumicestone Passage.

➡️ Healthy habitats need healthy connections.
➡️ Healthy waterways need healthy catchments.
➡️ And both need informed planning, ongoing restoration and a community prepared to speak up for them.

Revisit Shannon Mooney’s presentation for Healthy Land & Water here:
🔗 https://takeactionpumicestonepassage.com.au/session/7-1-protecting-the-biodiversity-significance-and-nature-conservation-values-of-the-pumicestone-region/

Shannon Mooney, Healthy Land and Water Team Leader, Science, Information and Monitoring Over the last 15 years, Shannon has collated, developed and implemented a Corporate GIS System that underpins Healthy Land and Water’s business strategy and investment initiatives. This work has enabled and inf...

01/09/2026

🌿 BIODIVERSITY MONTH: WHAT MAKES THE PUMICESTONE PASSAGE AND ITS TRIBUTARIES SO SPECIAL?

Sometimes, the most extraordinary residents are the ones we barely know are there.

Scientists have discovered tiny, non-parasitic lampreys—affectionately described as “vegan Draculas”—in fragmented freshwater habitats across Queensland.

Including an unexpected population in Coochin Creek, part of the greater Pumicestone Passage catchment.

Measuring only around 10 centimetres, these remarkable jawless fish feed on organic matter found in creek beds.

Lampreys are considered “living fossils”, with an evolutionary history stretching back before the dinosaurs.

Because these freshwater populations are isolated, they cannot simply move through the ocean or cross land when their habitat is disturbed.

If water quality declines, creek flows change or one population disappears, that loss may be permanent.

The discovery is a powerful reminder of why the Pumicestone Passage cannot be protected in isolation from the waterways that sustain it.

Our creeks, wetlands, riparian corridors and freshwater tributaries form one interconnected living system—supporting species we recognise and others science may still be discovering.

During Biodiversity Month, let’s celebrate what makes this catchment so special—and strengthen our commitment to protecting its water quality, ecological connectivity and natural habitats before more species are lost through “silent extinction”.

Because we cannot protect the Passage without protecting every waterway that flows into it.

Read the fascinating ABC News story:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-21/queensland-home-to-three-varieties-of-vegan-dracula-lampreys/

Scientists are working to determine the full range of the ancient and elusive creatures that have lain hidden for 150 million-odd years.