Understanding, enjoying and caring for our oceans
This large sponge in the Darwin Art Gallery and Museum reminds me of how prawn trawling decimated our SA gulfs soft bottom habitats and meadows: – I also think about Smith Bay (on Kangaroo Island) and the huge old green coral colony* there, the survival of which has uncanny shades […]
I see similarities between the recent and seemingly quite rapidly escalating decline in Port River dolphin numbers and the continuing extinction trend in the bushland birds of Adelaide and the Mount Lofty Ranges. Ornithologists have been saying for decades that the many smaller, specialised birds (such as robins, flycatchers, tree-creepers […]
I wanted to do a shallow sub-tidal snorkel at the cliff base at Carrickalinga. I was able to do a shore entry via a walking track from the North Bay car park. This location has been part of a Green Sanctuary Zone in the Carrickalinga Cliffs MPA since 2014. (Personal […]
Dear Sir/Madam/Staff Concerned, I, as Secretary of the Marine Life Society of South Australia Inc. (hereafter MLSSA Inc) ,with the President and Committee’s unanimous support, do hereby provide our position statement concerning KIPT’s Smith Bay K.I proposal for a deep water port facility. MLSSA Inc, as the only incorporated not-for-profit […]
This photo was taken at Rapid Bay between the old and new jetties: The fish in the background, behind the adult Castelnau’s (aka Pretty polly) wrasse, is an older, juvenile Bridled leatherjacket. The leatherjacket is over a seagrass meadow, predominantly Amphibolis (aka ‘wireweed’). The Bridled leatherjacket is one of our […]
This photo of the Normanville SLSC was taken from the “Syngnathid Hotspot” site: – Normanville SLSC (Taken by David Muirhead) ‘Syngnathid Hotspot’ (colloquial term only) is that area of shallow sand and seagrass directly off of the Normanville SLSC (roughly a hectare in total area and max depth is 5m […]
I recently collected a small congolli that I found effectively ‘belly up’. The small congolli effectively ‘belly up’ (Taken by David Muirhead) Actually, it was lying on its side, on the shallow bottom towards one sandy rubbly bank of the moderately briskly outflowing but very narrow rivulet. The small congolli lying on its side, […]
In the afternoon of 3rd October, I saw a pair of (what I STRONGLY suspect were) some sort of pygmy or dwarf cetacean, species indeterminate. I saw them from the lookout at Carrickalinga’s Roma Mitchell Reserve. They were quite close to shore and moving rapidly north towards Myponga Beach. Both […]
Further to my article “The 1875 Communication Cable from Normanville to Kangaroo Island”, whether the cable was installed in during the 1860s or the 1870s, has been a niggling doubt for the author. The few historical records I’d come across seemed to vary a bit as to key dates with regards to the […]
Encounters of the kind below are not what most of us expect when at the beach for a swim and a bit of relaxation on a nice summer day. Which adds a special touch, for me at least. You can wade bare-footed at knee to waist depth off almost any white […]