Climate Change

I’m coming to the end of my two weeks holiday and with the return to work my posts will slow down, but before they do one last tale of a dip in the ocean.  On Saturday morning it wasn’t that great and it felt like everything was in hiding, and as the day wore on it just got worse.  Sunday morning I strolled the short walk from our house to the beach, with a hot cup of tea in hand and no snorkel gear.  The trees round the house indicated a fresh easterly breeze and that could, and did, mean that the water was not calm.  So I went back home sipping my tea:

As the day wore on, and for the first time in weeks, the wind didn’t pick up but dropped to almost nothing.  Today there was also a very low swell and so in the early afternoon I went to have a second look and decided it was worth going in.  I headed back to the river mouth end of our beach, where I was greeted with calm clear waters.  I could see more shoals of tiny juvenile fish bobbing about next to the security of the weed, way too small to be captured in an image.  Occasionally there were also groups of more mature and less skittish Western Gobbleguts:

There were certainly more fish about, not in large shoals but I noted a greater of variety of them.  It’s always interesting checking at my images when I get home, in the one above just underneath the reef it looks like there may have been a small ray.  Not so clear in this compressed image but the full resolution image certainly shows a distinct smooth curve of the edge of its body.  While I didn’t see that out there I did spy a coral that I don’t often see, the obvious thought being that it was a plate coral:

Doing a bit of research my first thought was its a hard coral of the Monitpora genus but it is in fact of the Astreopora genus.  These corals can form many shapes including plates, branches, vases or even just encrusting the area it resides.  The real giveaway are the corallites, which are the bony houses in which the coral polyp resides.  The polyp is the part of the coral that collects food, it is effectively the mouth.  The corallites on Astreopora corals are more distinct, can be raised or depressed and form a circular texture that makes the coral look like a net:

Like my last dip in these waters I spent a lot of time looking at the larger variety, in shape, size and colour, of marine plants.  These green bulbous plants really caught my eye, but I have no idea what they may be.  The closest thing that I can find online are Sea Grapes, but the shape and appearance suggest they are not these.  Sea Grapes are also called Green Caviar.  They have little bubbles that grow on their stem, which are quite delicate and open up on your tongue releasing a slightly salty taste.  Needless to say I didn’t try that with these plants:

My next find were clumps of soft flowing weed, isolated from the main areas of reef ,most of these clumps were on the sandy bottom.  The long flexible stems resulted in the entire plant swaying very gently with the low swell of the day, and I wondered how they would survive in rougher conditions being exposed in these open sandy areas.  At the end of the stems are what look like upturned caps or umbrellas leading me to think that it may be a type of Acetabularia, commonly called mermaid’s wine glass:

As I came back to the surface after taking the above image, I turned round to see a large Smooth Stingray glide within metres of me.  This one had been in a tussle with something, as the tail was missing.  It did not hang about to allow me a good look at it, and kept a steady pace out to sea.  It is the first ray that I have seen this season so I had to include the image despite it being a tad murky are far off.  It took a little for me to react and take a snap.  The conditions for snorkelling are with luck far from over so hopefully I get to see more rays this season:

It is amazing that a creature of that size could have come so close to me and if I hadn’t turned my head I would never have known it was there.  Then as I swam over the next set of reef I saw a Green Sea Turtle.  As soon as it saw me it propelled itself at an incredible speed and within moments was lost in the distance, there was no point in attempting to follow it.  It is very rare to see sea turtles this far south, it is certainly my first sighting off our beach.  This season there has been a strong Leeuwin current and this is likely why this turtle had come so far south:

The Leeuwin current stretches from northern Australia and runs down the west coast, before heading east along the southern coast.  When it is stronger it brings warmer temperatures, and this year the sea is approx. two degrees warmer.  It is both the strong current and warmer water that is why some unusual species can be found this year.  With climate change the ocean currents will continue to change and the whole make up of our local marine life will change with it.  So maybe over time I’ll see more turtles:

Couldn’t resists the above image with the red weed standing out in stark contrast to the greens.  Now I walk along the beach for half a kilometre or so before going in, and this time to save me the walk back along the beach I kept drifting towards the beach access road.  In one area the waters got very shallow, less weed and plants, and not so many fish to be seen.  It was so shallow that I had to weave my way over the area to avoid becoming beached.  Some formations created ledged and under this one spied a Horseshoe Leatherjacket:

These leatherjackets, I’ve heard, are certainly not favoured by people fishing.  Regardless of their dislike for them the Horseshoe Leatherjacket in particular has a very striking pattern.  Unfortunately they never stay still long enough to allow me to take a decent image.  I eventually got into deeper water, and was almost at the point I would exit.  Below me the landscape had changed again and was now sea grass covering reef, with the occasional sandy hollow.  It was in one of these that spied a small ray:

This Bight Stingaree, and unlike the Smooth Stingray I had seen earlier, allowed me to get up close to take a few snaps and properly identify it.  After duck diving a couple of times to get a good look at it, I bobbed about above and watched it slowly move into a more sheltered area out of view of curious eyes such as mine.  It was then, after 75min in the water,  finally time to head back to shore and go home.  While I had seen so much, as I drove back, I was hoping that I had been successful in capturing a half decent image of the Green Sea Turtle: