Summer water temperatures don’t seem to have climbed too high this year. After last year’s coral bleaching, it was nice to be in about 20 degrees. Hopefully it stays that way for a while.
North of fossil beach is quite a nice area of reef with patches of green coral interspersed with seagrass and areas of bare sand and rock. Traditionally, it is quite a good place to find seahorses, though we didn’t see any today. Sometimes they just seem to disappear. What was a nice surprise was a Port Jackson Shark, as we don’t normally see them here.
The diversity and abundance of sapsucking seaslugs have declined markedly since winter, along with seasonal die-off of the Caulerpa. I only found one on the whole swim.
A couple of mosaic leatherjackets and a single juvenile dusky morwong were the only fish – this area continues to be largely fishless, which is a wonder, when one of the wealthiest fishing clubs is at its margin. One wonders when they’ll work this out and invest time into allowing natural stocks to rebuild along the coast.
A bright pink sponge dorid nudibranch sitting out conspicuously on a piece of seagrass was fun. They are usually more hidden away. There were also quite a few juvenile fish around including tiny Tasmanian blennies and painted dragonets. I stopped a few times to photograph the twinbar gobies. These occupy the sand and have a little fin they flash upwards with bars along it. We usually overlook them but they are quite characterful and allow close approach to photograph.
Right now there are also a lot of jellies. They’re nothing to really worry about. If you’re snorkelling you can swim around them or admire them closely. Their tentacles extend outwards and are quite lovely in the sunlight. We did emerge with slightly zinging lips … like licking your lips after eating hot sauce. I’m sure there are fragments in the water as the fish seem to love to feed on them.
On another subject, my partner Carla found three extinct shark teeth fossils. One was a huge upper tooth of an extinct great shark, the largest she’s found so far. The other two we gave to kids heading to go fossil hunting. Possibly the highlight of the day to hear their enthusiasm and gift something back for future generations.
Can’t wait to get back into the water again this weekend!
