South Australia’s coastal waters continue to experience pressure from harmful algal blooms (HABs), with impacts on ecosystem health, fisheries, tourism, public amenity and community confidence. Scientific consensus recognises that HABs arise from multiple interacting drivers, including nutrient enrichment (nitrogen and phosphorus), dissolved organic matter, fine particulates, physical stratification and climate-driven changes in hydrodynamics.

Desalination infrastructure is essential to South Australia’s long-term water security and is not identified as a primary cause of HABs. However, desalination discharge interfaces represent fixed, engineered points within the marine environment where controlled, reversible interception and filtration can be trialled under existing regulatory oversight.

This paper proposes a small, independently governed proof-of-concept (PoC) to test whether passive interception and filtration systems, deployed at or downstream of desalination discharge interfaces, can achieve measurable reductions in particle-associated nutrients, organic matter and other bloom-catalysing materials under South Australian operating conditions.

In southern Australian waters, harmful algal blooms rarely arise from a single cause. In practice, they tend to emerge when nutrient availability coincides with warm conditions, water-column stratification, and long residence times — a combination that is particularly common in semi-enclosed systems such as Gulf St Vincent and Spencer Gulf (Anderson et al., 2012; Roberts et al., 2019; Kämpf, 2026).

This paper brings together peer-reviewed science, regulator guidance, and operational experience to explore whether SORR Gyroid interception structures could play a limited but useful role during active HAB events. Specifically, we consider whether physically intercepting particulate, organic, and toxin-associated fractions — including foams, scums, cell fragments, and organic flocs — could reduce exposure and secondary impacts in aquaculture and near-field environments.

It is important to be clear about what is, and is not, being proposed. The Gyroid system is not a nutrient treatment technology, and it is not expected to prevent blooms from forming. Instead, it is discussed here as a mitigation and exposure-reduction measure, intended to complement existing regulatory controls, feed optimisation, fallowing practices, and catchment nutrient management (EPA Tasmania, 2023; Ross et al., 2025).

This paper proposes a low-risk, reversible pilot to test towed surface interception booms that incorporate SORR Gyroid capture media to collect surface algal scum and foam during favourable windows in Spencer Gulf (near-shore and open water), with a transferable pathway for Gulf St Vincent.

The concept is grounded in international oil spill containment and recovery practice—the closest marine engineering analogue for buoyant surface layers—using conservative rules on relative flow limits, tow speeds, draft/freeboard proportioning, and deployment geometries (J-tow and U/V sweep) [3,5,7,9]. The key control rule is that retention deteriorates when the component of relative flow normal to the boom approaches approximately 0.7–1.0 knots due to headwave formation and entrainment/underflow losses [3,4,5,9].

This document is presented as a Discussion Paper and Proof of Concept (PoC) Proposal for the Government of South Australia, EPA SA, SARDI and relevant stakeholders to consider a targeted, science-led pilot deployment of SORR Gyroid Boom systems for the physical interception and removal of harmful algal bloom (HAB) biomass, surface foams and associated toxins.

The proposal is not for immediate large-scale rollout.
It is for structured, controlled evaluation of a practical, low-risk engineering intervention at a priority site: Yorke Peninsula.

The former Port Stanvac Refinery, operational from 1963 to 2003, has a complex legacy of contaminants including petroleum hydrocarbons, specialist chemicals and solvents, PFAS compounds, and heavy metals such as lead. These pollutants have impacted soil, groundwater, and nearby marine environments, creating ongoing environmental management challenges for the site.

SORR’s Approach

SORR Innovations Pty Ltd delivers innovative, Environmentally Sustainable Circular Economy (ESCE) solutions for pollution control and remediation. Our technologies and processes focus on:

• Clean water, valuable waste,
• Zero landfill outcomes

These solutions are perfectly suited to legacy industrial sites like Port Stanvac.

Heavy rainfall events in Sydney continue to deliver large volumes of untreated stormwater directly into Sydney Harbour. These inflows carry sediments, nutrients, organic matter, microplastics and hydrocarbons, degrading water quality and increasing ecological and public-safety risks immediately following rain events.

This white paper proposes a prevention-first stormwater interception pilot using SA

Water Innovation (SAWI) and SORR Micro & Nano Filtration Units to intercept and filter

stormwater before it enters the harbour .

Oyster leases and other sensitive marine habitats are increasingly exposed to short-duration but high-impact water-quality events, including stormwater runoff, sewage spills, harmful algal blooms (HABs), nutrient pulses and suspended particulate loads. These episodic events can trigger precautionary harvest closures, ecological stress and market-access impacts, even where long-term baseline water quality remains within regulatory limits.

This white paper presents a prevention-first, reversible protection approach using SORR

Gyroid surface booms and subsurface curtains to intercept contaminant loads before

they enter oyster growing areas and sensitive marine habitats .

PFAS and micro/nanoplastics are among the most difficult environmental pollutants to remove from

waterways. Traditional remediation approaches—such as high-flow pump-and-treat systems using

granular activated carbon (GAC) or synthetic resins—are effective but come at a high cost: they are

energy-intensive, infrastructure-dependent, and generate non-recyclable waste.