The Department of Environment and Science (DES) is urging people who see marine animals in distress to call its 1300 130 372 hotline.
The call follows more than 450 reports of marine animals being sick, injured, stranded or deceased so far this year.
Senior Wildlife Officer at DES, Liz Vang said the majority of reports involved turtles due to either poor health, predators or boat strikes.
“So far, DES has received 345 reports of turtles being sick, injured, stranded or deceased,” Ms Vang said.
“We’ve also seen 59 reports about whales, 24 reports regarding dugongs, 24 for dolphins, two for sea snakes, and one seal.”
She said these reports enabled an incident response to be logged and action to be taken as necessary.
“Community assistance is critical for a rapid response when finding injured, stranded or dead marine wildlife. However, members of the public should not try to help a distressed animal which has become stranded, beached or is in need of assistance in or out of the water,” Ms Vang said.
“The best thing you can do is take an accurate note of the location and immediately call the hotline.”
She said photographs were also important.
“Photos are used to identify the species, size, type of damage and identifying features or research tag with a serial number,” Ms Vang said.
