Setting sail in July 2023, RLS Co-founder Graham Edgar hopped aboard sailing catamaran 'Melita' along with a crew of RLS divers, ready to complete biodiversity surveys along the way as Melita embarked on her lap of Australia. RLSer Kirsty Whitman reports on the team's adventures during the first leg of the voyage, sailing from Gladstone to Cairns.
Returning to Barkley Sound for the third consecutive year, RLS Canada's team of passionate marine scientists surveyed 20 sites in May this year to build on their existing time series data. This time around, the team surveyed four new sites and recorded returning species such as the sunflower star, as well as some first on-transect encounters like playful harbour seals!
Sydney-based RLS Trainer and Coordinator John Turnbull gets to the pointy end of Tripneustes identification trip-ups.
The 2023 Cod Grounds trip was four years in the making. We battled bushfires, a global pandemic and three years of La Nina floods, but finally in June this year, the curse of the Cod Grounds was lifted! Everything about this trip was epic. It can best be described as one of those 3 dimensional jigsaw puzzles that can only be solved if all the pieces line up perfectly, and boy did they line up for us this year!
This year’s Sydney surveys have been a true labour of love, with 43 surveys across 21 sites completed over the last six months thus far, and more to come! The team has been busy, spotting some tropical visitors on transect, as well as observing local changes to urchin abundances and kelp coverage following recent heavy rainfall.
