Citizen science in action- Mud Islands

Photo taken from Mud Islands with Pelican1 and Authur's Seat in the background.

This Port Phillip Bay landmark was the first site that Mathew Flinders climbed to orient himself, after sailing into the bay in 1802.

Mud Islands has become one of my favourite stops of the Two Bays project. You become aware of them before you see them by the many birds overhead winging their way there. They are an important home and breeding ground for Pelicans, Ibis, Terns, Cormorants, Royal Spoonbills, Storm-Petrels and Silver Gulls.

They are made up of three shrubby islands that rise up out of and are part of the Great Sands in Port Phillip Bay. The islands enclose a shallow tidal lagoon that is fringed with salt marsh. Despite their name the islands are in fact made up of shelly sand and resemble an atoll. The islands are situated closely to the Heads.

The islands were formed by wind and wave action and kept firmly in place by outcrops of phosphate rock. The phosphate rock formed beneath the guano deposits (bird droppings) as guano leached below and combined with shelly sand below to form hard calcium phosphate. This rare rock type is able to withstand marine erosion. The islands are reknown for their bird life and it is interesting to note how strongly birds feature in the creation of the islands themselves. When visiting you can almost imagine a conference of the birds type scenario where they all decided to contribute to building a site for themselves.

The islands are protected under various conventions including the Ramsar and the Register of the National Estate. They are managed as part of the Port Phillip Heads Marine Park by Parks Victoria.

Pelican1 headed out from Queenscliff with a new young Skipper learning the ropes. The boat was almost as full as the belly of Pelican is surveyed to hold (in enclosed waters). Including crew we were 44 people. I have observed since the end of this year's Two Bays project that the period of the program contained some of the best possible weather. If we had held it any earlier or later we would have lost days to bad weather. The winds were perfect to visit the islands as they cannot be too strong to be able to do the observing work and to land people safely in the dinghies. It was in fact, one of our loveliest days on the water. 

Morning scene on the way over to the islands. Jan Carey creating a slide plate to check the cell structure of the Codium species (also known as Brocoli weed or even more endearingly, Dead Man's fingers) on the table, as it is only through seeing the cellular structure that you can tell whether it is the introduced species or not.  The image below was taken by Chris Hayward from Parks (standing 2nd left above) which shows the waisted cellular structure of the invasive Codium fragile. The pest species originated in Japan and probably travelled here in ballast water. It presents a danger to native species by taking over their habitat. I have also read that overgrazing by sea urchins may provide sufficient disturbance to native seaweeds to enable their getting a toehold.

And the real thing below (Dead Man's Fingers) on the shores of Mud Islands. 

Jan Carey is currently working on an ARC linkage grant to develop optimal monitoring methods for citizen scientists to detect non-indigenous marine species. She has been coming on board Pelican for the last few years with her PhD student Kim Millers who is also writing her PhD on developing methodologies for working with community to detect pest species. On this trip to Mud Island they were both on board to gather more data with members from Sea Search and the Friends of Mud Island group. Below Jan shares her knowledge with the group of volunteers.

Below Jan is setting up the Marine Pest survey site.

Below a picture of a star of pest stars. The Northern Pacific Sea Star has invaded Port Phillip and their numbers apparently have more combined weight than all of the rest of Port Phillip's biomass put together! Anecdotally the volunteers reported more numbers from our counts last year.

And never confuse the Northern Pacific Sea stars with our indigenous 11 armed star fish below. One of the Parks rangers was sharing the story that in early media reports about the Northern Pacific Sea stars the newspaper posted a photo of our Indigenous sea star and well meaning locals pulled many of the wrong kind out of the water. There were also early attempts to eradicate the Pacific sea star by chopping them in half and then throwing them back into the water. Also a big mistake as they can regenerate from a single leg. 

On board too were Peter Menkhorst and volunteers for Birds Australia to carry out some shorebird monitoring. Below Peter leads the way to the inner lagoon of the Islands. 

Peter was the first person to record pelicans breeding on the islands in 1983 and has been monitoring the bird community on Mud Islands for 28 years. He has recently completed a survey of the 10 waterbird species that now breed there. Here are some quotes from Peter from a DSE Media release - 22 Dec 2010 about Mud Islands.

“Mud Islands have grown dramatically in importance as a waterbird breeding site over the past two decades with an estimated 95,000 pairs, belonging to 10 species, nesting on the islands in 2008 and 2009. The most abundant species are the Straw-necked Ibis (with 56,000 nests) and the Silver Gull with perhaps 30,000 nests,” Mr Menkhorst said.

“When I first found pelicans breeding on Mud Islands there were only 10 nests, but the number of pelicans breeding in Port Phillip Bay has risen to around 800 pairs as the species becomes increasingly adapted to living in close proximity to humans.”
“The breeding pelicans are now using the islands for around 10 months of the year and, if possible, we’d like people to keep away from the breeding colonies and avoid disturbing the birds with boats or jet-skis.”
“Mud Islands are an amazing sight when the birds are breeding with thousands of birds sitting on nests which are built on the ground or in the low saltbush shrubs.”
“Many Victorians wouldn’t realise that this important bird breeding colony is right here in Port Phillip Bay. We want to increase community awareness of this significant site and we want visitors to respect the needs of the breeding birds and to avoid causing them to leave their nests. Eggs or nestlings in unattended nests are vulnerable to being eaten by other species.”

“They also host significant numbers of breeding Pied Cormorant, White-faced Storm-Petrel and Crested Tern as well as smaller numbers of Royal Spoonbill, Caspian Tern and Little Egret. Over the past 20 years Mud Islands have also lost one species as a breeding resident with Fairy Tern no longer breeding there.

“Mud Islands are also nationally significant as a feeding and roosting site for migratory wading birds including the Grey Plover, Double-banded Plover, Bar-tailed Godwit, Grey-tailed Tattler, Ruddy Turnstone, Great Knot, Red Knot and Sharp-tailed Sandpiper.”

The friends of Mud Islands, Sea Search and Parks Victoria completes some seagrass surveys as well.

My daughter Aurora snorkelling in the wonderfully clear waters around the islands.

Sailing home our young Skipper turned into a scientist!

See and download the full gallery on posterous

The group on our return to Queenscliff pictured. We had set out to do so many things in one day (the usual Pelican feast) and with the blessings of the weather gods we did it all!. We were also travelling on country with Traditional Owners from the Wada Wurrung who had not had the opportunity to visit the island before.

Two Bays launch tomorrow...

Here is an open invitation for any Melbourne bloggers to come along to support the launch of Two Bays 2011

Hope to do some sea time blogging as we travel both Port Phillip and Western Port Bays over the last half of January.

Over the past weeks the Eastern Coast of Australia and especially Queensland has been on high flood alert. Brisbane has just experienced the worst flooding since 1974. Though the peak was a bit lower than the 1974 flood, the impact will be as high if not higher as the city has grown so much in the intervening years. Personally, all the people I know there and in environs are safe and mostly dry. But so many others are not as lucky.
The flood event is being linked to the fact that we are experiencing the La Nina weather pattern which is influenced by the Pacific Ocean. There has already been a lot of interesting science commentary linking the ferocity of the flood with climate change. It fits predicted patterns of weather behaviour even on top of the extremes predicted with a La Nina cycle.

Two years ago I was caught in a flash flood scenario in the Currumbin Creek Valley. I was staying with a friend in a cottage that had supposedly been built above the 100 year flood line. But the plans did not reckon with four lows sitting over the mountain looming behind and letting the heavens pour down on country already saturated by constant rain. This created an immediate torrent which transformed a peaceful babbling, platypus inhabited creek, into a raging river.
We survived due to a combination of luck and a bit of common sense. But luck was the more powerful factor of the two. That night a woman died just above us as she was swept off a culvert in her car. Along with some cows and horses.
Towoomba suffered the same type of event earlier this week, which was also not on the radar of the meteorologists because the cascading events occurred all too swiftly.

Time will tell to what extent these terrible floods are driven by local cycles and how much they have been exacerbated by climate change. All I know is that as I am not there on hand to help people mop up I can only feel slightly useful by working in the way we are with Pelican. I hope that by adding to the knowledge of the Marine environment and connecting people to the importance of this process with shared understanding and collaborative learning will aid in the task of getting to grips with the challenge of our rapidly changing world.

Conversations with the sky

Putting on the dusty coat of my neglected blog and shrugging the load of unsaid thoughts into my hands to throw skywards.

On reflection I see the year has hurtled by. So much has been spent in angst about getting projects up, paid for and attempting to pool as many elements together to create rich and meaningful times at sea. Both in a cultural and scientific sense. Lovely time has also been spent growing my daughter up. Following her journey through 2nd grade, watching her friendships, sometimes struggling to help her make sense of separated parents. But always sharing, talking and doing lots of things together.

The next Pelican project Two Bays starts up again in January and most of the last two months has been spent in frenetic activity to get all the pieces together.

But I found myself lagging a little behind the tasks I had set myself. Starting to stare at screens rather than reeling off e mails or making the important phone calls.



And perhaps the antidote to a niggardly sense of leaving something of importance behind is to give a few more moments to cloud gazing. Waiting and letting a quiet repose attempt to shuffle this unquiet mind.
This year has flown by and it is also incredible to reflect that this time last year my sister was dying. She held on for Christmas and passed just two days later. She is all around me at the moment, illuminating her absence.

I want/need more absent mindedness to give me a space to have the presence of mind to reach under/ behind the curtain of the daily tumult. And then perhaps I can gather the leaves of the year and throw them skywards and watch them fall ever so slowly.

Falling averages

Think it is time to get a bit of a move on here, or the old Wild Dog road will curl in on itself. I think the scarcity of posting only attests to the fact that I am not getting the breathing space to meander in blogland. So to give my averages a lift here goes with some pictorial reflections of the last month. They are taken on or in the water during the Two Bays project.

I had blogged directly but often obliquely about my sister's illness last year. It was a terrible year for her and for us to watch her go through so much both mental and physical pain. She managed to shine through all the time which always astounded me. As she was hammered by the cancer; her sense of herself only seemed to grow, to catch up with what was happening to her. She died on the 27th of December, beating the odds to get that far. We held her funeral a week later and four days after that I was launching a 24 day community project on Pelican. I really did wonder if I would get through it. Having witnessed what my sister had been through it also made me more determined to make a good shot of it.

So the first month of the New Year has passed. Now over a month since my sister died. And it is still impossible to let go.

I can only float when I have the opportunity to immerse myself in watery moving worlds. Enjoy watching the way light travels through water and catches the myriads of gardens that are normally out of sight.

Underwater waterfall

Crossing the Rip

I wonder what is the unconscious motivator for the things that we end up doing. How is it that I start out studying how to paint (or think) and end up working in the marine world? I will answer this conundrum when I have had a little bit more sleep. Till then I will leave you with a pic from midway through the Two Bays program and write up a bit more soon,

Wominjeka

Ahh the joys of cramming. Will post a bit more when this festival event is over but at the moment I am madly getting ready for the Two Bays Forum. I am working with the St Kilda Indigenous Festival and we are hopefully creating an interesting hybrid-style event.
Follow the links in the title for more info and will have some blogging time soon. Maybe.

Two Bays

Boonerwrung Elder Carolyn Briggs - Welcome to Country - Two Bays Launch, Docklands, 2nd December, 2007.

Andrew Denton getting to know Weedy at the Launch.

Weedy Sea Dragon, photographed by Guillaume Martinez an EPA scintist on the project. Flinders Pier.

The Nerd Centre of the Project

Two Bays is now well underway. We launched last Sunday, almost a week ago now. The State Environment Minister, Gavin Jennings, helped launch as well as our patron, Andrew Denton and a Welcome to Country and Ceremony by Carolyn Briggs. The event ran incredibly smoothly and I think I finally relaxed about the whole deal the following day. It is amazing how much time and effort can go into 45 minutes!

Time for blogging has been very scarce as I have been frantically putting this project together and at the same time been in a period of personal crisis. Matters of the heart.

The project is falling into place and as I write I can hear the chirpy sounds of a bunch of volunteer divers who have just emerged from snorkling, studying and exploring the Yaringa Marine Park in Western Port Bay.
I hope to blog a bit more over the next few days, but just wanted to get up that Two Bays is up and running and we are finally out on the water doing fun things!

As for the matters of the heart I am learning a process of being able to sit with complex feelings and allow the body and heart time to absorb, meditate and hopefully clarify. It is all one can do besides travel with as much honesty and hopefully integrity as possible.

I wrote a poem to try and capture a bit of this called-

FEET ON COUNTRY

One foot in front of the other,
stumbling on loose rock,
reminding me of one foot in front of the other.

Warmth, light and shadows on the path,
a Currowong calls, and I pause to listen.
I hear up ahead the returning call, "I am here, I am here."

The trees stretch up into the heat of the first day of Summer,
the forest speckled with the fresh green crowns of fern trees,
flickering pale limbs scarcer amongst the Ironbark.

I find a place to pause, a road carved in the forest,
making a seat.
I sit.