After less than ideal weather at Port Stephens, Reef Dragon and the RLS team pushed onward to the Solitary Islands. The land based team, Ashley and Margo Smith, Nicola and Tom Davis and Kate Tinson, joined the able bodied crew of Anna Berthelsen, Sam Griffiths, Jen Hoskin and our excellent captain Ian Donaldson for near perfect conditions.

After transferring gear to the boat the evening before, we boarded at Coffs Harbour on Friday morning for a long and very relaxed motor to South Solitary Island. The water was clear and blue and the water temperature a pleasant 24 degrees.

Although Manta Arch didn’t live up to its name, there were four Grey Nurse sharks idling over the next ridge near the Arch, which some of us saw. All sites had an eclectic mix of temperate and colourful tropical species that kept the cameras working overtime. This was a long day that culminated in lots of discussion on what we had seen. We left our gear on board as it would be an early start the next morning.

On Saturday the land team drove north to Arrawa to meet Reef Dragon, which had left Coffs very early in the morning, to be closer to North West Solitary Island. On arrival we ran into Ian Shaw and Bob Edgar and Nicola Fraser (RLS trainee) as they were heading out too. We hitched a ride out to our boat since the Dragon crew were frolicking about and swimming off the back of the catamaran, obviously enjoying the balmy waters.

North West Island put on a spectacular show of colourful reef and excellent diversity of species including two manta rays on transect. Bob, Ian and Nicola F. joined us for morning tea as we watched and snorkled with the feeding mantas. And just when we thought it couldn’t get any better, Surgeon’s Reef dished up a fish soup. At times we could hardly see the reef through the schools of Schuettea scalaripinis (eastern pomfret), Scorpis lineolata (silver sweep), Parma unifasciata (parma), Pomacentrus coelestis (Australian damsel), Atypichthys strigatus (Mado), and Prionurus microlepidotus (sawtail surgeon) completed the picture of a beautiful and colourful reef.

Saying goodbye the next morning, we left the locals to survey Split Solitary on Sunday. Many thanks to the crew of Reef Dragon for their hospitality and Sam for filling the tanks.

P.S. If you happen to watch the travel shows on telly you may see some of us Novocastrians on 7TWO in mid August.

Of course, we had some good survey dives at Port Stephens, and some not so good ones. The dates coincided with 6.5m seas and lots of heavy rain, so as you would expect, the viz deteriorated, and not even Rick recommended surveying on the Sunday! But following up my PS trip with 9 days live-aboard diving at the Poor Knights in New Zealand, caused me to reflect a little.

I guess those that regularly attend the RLS trips are pretty ‘hard core’ divers, who want to give back something in return for the enjoyment they get from the underwater world. Most of us probably average between 50-200 dives per year?

Anyway, on the NZ trip was a woman about to turn 70, who last year logged over 500 dives… and even the bloke who organizes the trips and is soon to celebrate his 50^th year of diving the Poor Knights, logged ‘only’ 263 dives last year. Both are of course incredibly competent divers, making me feel clumsy underwater!

So I shrank a bit, realizing that there is always more we can do, or at least make room for, as we get older.

OK, back to Port Stephens. Our new RLS members included the incredibly keen Luigi and Petko, newly arrived from Italy and Bulgaria respectively, and Anna from New Zealand; as well as John. The rest of the team comprised Bill, Barb (honorary RLS safety officer), Kate, Margo, Ash, Jen, Tom and Nicola (and Rick). We all got on remarkably well, with John, Luigi and Petko coping admirably with the pressure to learn Latin names of the local fauna.

What else can I say? The house was great, and Margo did an exceptional job of keeping everything in apple pie order. The catamaran “Reef Dragon” was in town for the duration, supplementing the shore dives with day trips to the outer islands. Skipper Ian and first mate (and fellow RLS diver) Sam were most welcoming, and days on the catamaran were enjoyable days on the water.

Lots of data were gathered despite the variable weather, mostly thanks to the many diving options presented by the Port Stephens area. Gearing up (and down) for shore dives in heavy rain is something we won’t forget, but at least the water was substantially warmer than the rain. Fly Point and the like are capable of turning on exceptional dives, but provided somewhat muted experiences in the conditions. Regardless, a total of 122 different fish species and 77 different macro-mobile invertebrates/cryptic fishes were recorded over the 4 day period. A highlight for me was seeing a flathead the size of a small wobbegong!

Our Sydney RLS activities will be invigorated with the addition of John, Luigi and Petko, and I urge our regulars to stay in touch with these guys and not to pass up a chance to dive with them. Or invite them on your dives. They are rarin’ to go, and it is great to have them join the larger RLS team!

Thanks to all for a lovely long weekend.

The sailing catamaran, Reef Dragon, recently spent 3 weeks hosting Reef Life Surveys in Port Davey and Bathurst Harbour, as part of the planned circumnavigation of Australia by yacht.

With almost perfect weather right from leaving Hobart until we returned 3 weeks later, we were able to complete all of the priority surveys in Port Davey and the channel, as well as several lesser priority exploratory dives in Bathurst Harbour. The more exposed sites in Port Davey still presented some problems even in the low swell and several tape measures were either lost or damaged, but by taking advantage of the conditions at various sites we were able to dive for 21 days straight, sometimes up to 3 dives per day. Four volunteers, Nicole Hill, Caroline Mason, Sam Griffiths and Ian Shaw along with Graham Edgar took part in the surveys, with partial crew changeover taking place at Melaleuca twice during the trip.

Days were spent sailing to the first dive site, with shifts of divers completing the surveys and photo quadrats while evenings were spent in one of the many sheltered anchorages, filling tanks and preparing evening meals. All of the Port Davey – Bathurst Harbour area is scenic but some of the still evenings and mornings at anchor in Bramble Cove and Spain Bay are very memorable and photos taken from the top of nearby peaks during afternoon shore walks give a glimpse of the unique character of the area.

Highlights of the trip? Above water scenery was absolutely stunning, great skies with mountain backdrops; first dive in tannin stained water, eerie but fascinating, looking up and seeing the sun as an orange red pinprick on the water’s surface only 5 metres away; diving the walls at The Narrows, absolutely pitch black at 25 metres with the near vertical wall covered in anemones and zoanthids; Basque tuna stew with a bottle of red wine in the cockpit at dusk. It rarely gets better than that!

Reef Dragon is a superb dive platform with spacious covered cockpit area, easy access to the water from both hulls and an inflatable dive tender. As well there is a good size saloon for the dreaded data entry, a well-equipped galley and four comfortable state rooms. With two engines and a full complement of sails, Reef Dragon is well set up for ocean sailing, as she proved on her trip across the Pacific from Panama last year.

Reef Dragon is currently on her way up the east coast, hopefully arriving in northern NSW later in April or early May. If she is in a port near you pop down and say hello to the crew, or better still, take advantage of a survey dive or two with her in your area. If you have more time, consider a longer spell of 2 or 3 weeks as she goes around Australia’s coastline. Definitely an opportunity not to be missed as she plans to visit dive sites most of us only dream about.

RLS Annual Report 2012 Final Web

If successful and funding can be secured to make the year-long survey an ongoing activity, it will revolutionise the way the Australian marine environment is monitored. The extensive national baseline of data on reef fauna and flora built through the RLS volunteer team since its initiation in 2008 will be built upon with annual monitoring of the entire Australian continent. It will provide eyes underwater along both remote and urban coastlines; covering key marine protected areas as well as unique and pristine reefs.

RLS volunteers will have opportunities to join the circumnavigation for hop on-hop off legs of approximately 2 weeks, or for many of the regular group survey weekends in key locations (where the boat will do day trips with group accommodation on shore). An itinerary of the legs open to join in on the survey will be circulated later in the year and we hope that everyone can jump on board and take part in what will be an exciting and ground-breaking survey. The map here provides a general idea of the timing for the circumnavigation.

While RLS has proven enormously successful in collecting robust and invaluable species-level data from high latitude rocky reefs right through to tropical coral reefs, surveys of more diverse tropical fish faunas to date have been undertaken by a small subset of RLS divers with the experience in species-rich situations. Such is the challenge of undertaking visual census in diverse coral reefs that other organisations collecting data in these habitats survey only subsets of the fish fauna (e.g. particular families or species of interest), and consequently reduce the level of detail, and thus utility of the resulting data. The collection of data at the highest level of detail possible is one of the things that sets RLS apart from other organisations universally (the level of commitment shown by RLS volunteers is of course another that is closely linked).

The primary goal of the Ningaloo survey expedition was to increase the size of the RLS team with experience in such difficult survey conditions – well, by difficult we mean challenging in terms of species richness, rather than the warm, clear water typical of coral reefs! The first thing anyone learns by doing surveys of diverse coral reefs using RLS methods is that there is an enormous trade-off in terms of enjoying the diverse and amazing marine life (including the rewarding feeling of constantly encountering and learning new species) and the substantially increased time spent going through species IDs and entering data at the end of each day surveying (compared with surveys of temperate reefs). The team of Sylvia Buchanan, Paul Day, Carolina Garcia, Kevin Smith, Margo Smith and German Soler couldn’t have more quickly experienced this trade-off, but all of them put in an incredible effort to get past the mountain of learning (which equals time and effort!) required – by the end of the expedition proving themselves not only to be capable of handling the challenge, but also most clearly demonstrating enormous commitment to the program. The effort really had to be seen to be believed.

A second goal of the expedition was to collect robust data that could feed into the long-term monitoring and management of the Ningaloo Marine Park by the Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC). An ambitious goal in light of the need for divers to reach a very high bar in terms of data quality before data would be considered useful for such a purpose (or inclusion in the RLS database). With time and weather on our side and the massive effort by the team, this goal was achieved for a large number of priority sites for DEC: 30 transects were surveyed at 10 DEC priority sites out of a total of 53 transects at 22 sites (these numbers do not include training surveys; only those of high enough quality for addition to the RLS database and provision to DEC).

To provide an indication of the diversity of marine life encountered, 236 species of fish and 109 invertebrate and cryptic fish species were recorded, as well as numerous records of reptiles and mammals. The latter included dugongs, turtles and sea snakes on transect lines and humpback whales observed just off transect lines. Four shark species, including some large ones, a manta ray and a few cooler water species were also recorded.

As well as acknowledging the enormous contribution by RLS volunteers and support of DEC, Murdoch University (Mike and Frazer) deserves massive thanks for providing the use of the research station, and the Ningaloo Reef Dive shop provided a discount on air fills for the expedition. The expedition was undertaken as part of the ‘Community-assisted scientific assessment and monitoring of Western Australian Marine Protected Areas’ project, funded by a Coastwest grant from the Western Australian Department for Planning and Infrastructure and Caring for our Country.

The weekend was a huge success with a large number of sites surveyed by fantastic crew, including 2 new trainees. One of the great things about the annual Rottnest Island survey weekend is the ability to be able to accommodate a large group of volunteers and maximise survey output over the four day weekend. We had a hard core team of veterans this year; Paul Day, Wendy Hutchison and Kevin Smith made up the WA contingent, while a number of south eastern Australians made the trip over for the weekend; Don Love, Jen Hoskin, Tom Davis, Nicola Davis and Liz Oh. In addition we had two new WA trainees; Harri Davies and Amanda Willmott join the RLS team – proving they were more than capable of handling Reef Life Survey’s high quality, scientific data collection protocols.

134 different species of fishes and 78 different macro-invertebrates were recorded over the weekend; these numbers were up from last year with 123 different fish species and 64 different macro-invertebrate species recorded in 2011. Of these fishes recorded, 33 species were tropicals – 7 more than that recorded during the 2011 surveys. As seen in previous years, the most common fish species seen were; Chromis westaustralis (West Australian puller), Trachinops brauni (blue-lined hulafish), Coris auricularis (western king wrasse) and Pempheris klunzingeri (blackhead puller). Similarly, there were no shocks that Centrostephanus tenuispinus, Fromia polypora and Turbo torquatus were most common macro-invertebrate species.

The Rottnest weekend was funded by a Coastwest grant from the Western Australian Department for Planning and Infrastructure and Caring for our Country and was part of the Community-assisted assessment and monitoring of Western Australian Marine Protected Areas’ project. Chris Lukes, the Coastal Zone Management Coordinator for Coastwest came and met the RLS team and was able to see the crew in action.

Apart from the fabulous team of volunteers who put in hours of fish identification, data entry, photo cataloguing and diving – we must also thank Wendy and Chris for their super efforts with the UEC vessel. It made a real difference having a large, comfortable boat to dive from and to be able to get out to the offshore sites such as West End, Jackson Rocks, Swirl Reef and Roe Reef – some of which haven’t been re-surveyed in the last 2 years due to weather and accessibility.

The trip would not have been possible without the support of the Rottnest Island Authority who provided ferry tickets, the research station, tank fills and vehicle use. Helen Shortland-Jones, as always, did an amazing job sorting out all the on-island logistics.

Over the last 5 years RLS has collected high quality, standardised data from 23 sites around Rottnest Island, equating to a massive 201 surveys. These data feed directly back into the long term monitoring and management of Rottnest Island by the Rottnest Island Authority as well as contributing to the RLS database. We are looking forward to making next year the 6^th consecutive year of data collection from our Rottnest Island monitoring sites.

Inclement weather meant that diving started a day ahead of schedule and Friday and Saturday’s boat dives were spent surveying Broughton Island in almost perfect surface conditions and over 20m visibility. The first dive at North Rock was spectacular with Margo and Kate laying their tape in a gutter that was crammed with yellow tail scad (Trachurus novaezelandiae) and grey nurse sharks (Carcharias taurus). While the sharks could easily be counted (Margo saw ten at once on one occasion), the scad were a different story and abundance estimations was the subject of some lively discussion for most of the evening. It was noted that at least two of the grey nurse sharks had fishing gear attached, one trailing what appeared to be nylon-covered, steel clothesline about 2.5 m long.

By Sunday morning it was blowing 30 plus knots and while very sloppy on the surface, the visibility was still reasonable in the bay. The team split up to catch the afternoon high tide, with 3 divers going to Fly Point and 4 to the Pipeline.

Fish species numbers were comparable to previous surveys conducted by local RLS divers at this time of year, but it was noted there was not as many juvenile tropical species. Chaetodon kleinii and Chaetodon guentheri were the commonly observed tropical species. Anampses elegans, was observed on at least two transects at Broughton Island, a male in full colouration and two intermediate phase individuals. This species is very common around Lord Howe Island; however it is not regularly observed on the NSW coast and recent sightings further north at Coffs Harbour created a lot of interest among enthusiasts earlier this year.

At the end of the weekend, 22 transects were conducted over 7 key sites; 4 at Broughton and 3 inside the bay. Total fish species counted was 89 which is 20 more than the last time RLS surveyed Port Stephens as a group in 2009. Thanks to all participants for making this a successful weekend and thanks to Lets Go Adventures for their assistance, boat and tank hire, and to the two boat drivers who did a great job, Chris and Jimmy. Tom and Nicola are to be congratulated for their organisation of the weekend: securing first class accommodation, sussing out the great Thai restaurant and for having the foresight and flexibility to bring forward the boat dive, to take advantage of the weather conditions.

RLS surveys have been conducted at the Halifax Divesite in Nelson Bay for several years. More intensive surveying has been conducted in the last 18 months, however, due to concern over sand movement causing damage to the site. Surveys have been conducted at the site every 2 months since October 2010 to assess recovery from this disturbance. As an added bonus, these repeated surveys also provide an insight into seasonal variations in fish diversity in the region, which is heavily influenced by the East Australian current.

Surveys have been conducted on 2 transects at Halifax, with each survey starting at a known landmark on the reef. One transect is at a depth of 8m on the Eastern side, and the second transect is at a depth of 11m on the Western side.

Figure 1 shows the trend over the last 18 months in the average, across the 2 transects, of the total number of fish species encountered on each transect, along with average water temperatures over the same interval. Species richness at the site has followed a very clear seasonal trend, tracking changes in water temperature. The East Australia Current is known to sweep a host of tropical species into Nelson Bay over the summer, and the marked seasonality in species richness is primarily due to patterns of recruitment by tropical species, which apparently either emigrate or die-off during the cooler months.

Figure 2: Comparison of average water temperature and average number of species at Halifax

To date more than 250 species of fish have been identified on RLS surveys in the Port Stephens area. Table 1 shows the most common species with temperate and tropical or sub-tropical affinities recorded on transects in Nelson Bay. Note that while many of the tropical/sub-tropical species are only found during summer, some of these are also regularly encountered during winter; for example Parupeneus spilurus and Stethojulis interrupta.

Table 1: Common Temperate and Tropical Species in Nelson Bay

To date there is little evidence that sand movement at Halifax has had a significant impact on fish species at the site, however there is no question that sand inundation has devastated much of the site’s sponge gardens. Monitoring is ongoing and hopefully in the future the sponge gardens will recover. In the meantime, Halifax is still a fantastic place to see a wide variety of fish species, especially in Autumn!

For more information on diving in Nelson Bay see divingnelsonbay.weebly.com

Local RLS divers Elaine Kwee, Martin Mueller and Thierry Rakotoarivelo were joined by Rick Stuart Smith and a contingent from the Hunter: Ashley Smith, Kate Tinson, Margo Smith, Nicola Davis, Tom Davis and new recruit, David Atkinson for the four days. UTas database guru, Just Berkhout, also participated. He was able to give a few quick tips to volunteers and speak to the group on their suggestions to improve and streamline the data entry process.

Friday’s weather was perfect and most of the team split up to tick off the more exposed sites around the eastern beaches, while Tom and Nicola headed a little further south to Oak Park. Saturday and Sunday’s dives were predominantly boat dives inside Sydney Harbour, re-surveying the high priority sites around Middle, North and South Heads. Unfortunately strong southerlies and big swell restricted access to sites outside and around the Heads. Shore sites at Camp Cove and Shelly Beach were surveyed on Monday.

In total, 33 transects were completed at 15 sites. There were substantially fewer fish species recorded this year than last: 118 species, down from 187 from the same number of transects and sites in 2011. The difference was noticeable in fewer juveniles of tropical and sub-tropical species, presumably linked to cooler water temperatures than during the surveys last year.

The more unusual species included Batrachomoeus dubius (eastern frogfish) and a juvenile Lethrinus genivittatus (long spine emperor). Rick found an old friend, photographing a large Achoerodus viridus (eastern blue groper) at Camp Cove – The markings/scars confirming the same individual at that site for the last three years! We look forward to seeing him next year….

Thank you to all this year’s participants and the Bondi Dive Centre for fills and equipment hire. Also to the crew of Omega II, Pete and Guv, for sterling boat service and gourmet surface interval refreshments, hot cross buns and melting moments!