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Hold your breath

Autumn

Pelican is heading North for her home in Southern NSW in Bermagui. Two Bays is over and done with for the year though there is much follow up and hopeful chasing of funding for next year to be done. Our thoughts are turning North again to plan for our annual trip to Cape York.

But meanwhile it is a long weekend here in Melbourne. I have stayed home and am not on board to help deliver the boat as I hoped to catch up on many things. My daughter has gone away to stay with her Dad in Apollo Bay. In fact to Wild Dog Rd which was the inspiration for this blog.


But I have found myself a bit slow to get done what I need to do. I can blame the end of a cold but mainly it is the utter distraction of the tragedy befalling Japan at the moment and events in the Middle East that have consumed my time in front of the computer. I suppose it would be far better to have been producing positive steps rather than immersed in these far away events. But that is how it is.




A break in the weather came this afternoon and the rain and wind is bringing Autumn a step closer. The spider who carefully and quickly creates his web in my front garden is feasting on the abundance of insects from the wet Summer and Autumn. Yesterday I saw a butterfly struggling in the remains of last night's web. I couldn't help myself and ran out and managed to release the butterfly without damaging the wings.

I have been struggling in a net of emotions around separation and my difficulties getting used to shared parenting. I miss my daughter when she is away and miss the ideal of our old family retreat in the hills behind Apollo Bay.



But to end this self-pity as I did not write this to wallow but to try and clarify. I am thankful and appreciate that I have time to reflect. That I can continue to attempt the work we do with Pelican and have space to still wonder about the way life is. It is but a luxury while the ground shakes and waves bigger than houses can smash and destroy the unremarkable and remarkable realities that make up our daily lives.

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.

The day the councillors met their dolphin constituents

On the 22nd of January, Pelican headed across to Sorrento to pick up Mornington Peninsula Shire councillors and senior managers, Parks Victoria staff and people with valuable knowledge to share about the Bay environs. The day was coordinated through Parks Victoria's Bays and Maritime division to share and collaborate from the Bay's perspective, issues around caring for the coastal environment. For many councillors it is an educative trip to connect with the Bay and to understand management issues from a marine perspective. A pod of inquisitive bottle-nosed dolphins arrived early in the day to underscore the sea focus. On board, our resident Port Phillip dolphins had one of their champions on board, Jeff Weir, from the Dolphin Research Institute. 

There is something so bewitching in the way dolphin's eye you as they fluently keep pace with the bow of Pelican.

The day was spent zig-zagging across the Southern area of Port Phillip Bay, between Queenscliff, Rye and Sorrento, visiting some of the infrastructure (piers, jetty's, channel markers etc) that Parks Victoria maintains. The South Channel pile, pictured above, is a restored version of a 19th C channel light, that used to guide ships into Port Phillip Bay.

It may not be widely known that Parks Victoria, not only has responsibility for the Parks that they manage, but is also the Local Port and Waterway Manager for Port Phillip, Western Port and Yarra and Maribynong Rivers. This means that the organisation oversees all the commercial activities such as berths and moorings, manages more than $200 million worth of marine infrastructure, facilitates more than 80 million bay and river visits annually, coordinates 400 on water events each year and assists with emergency response on the bays and waterways. 

Local Government is of course connected to all these services and many of their services supply or overlap the responsibilities of Parks. Bringing people together on the Pelican is a lively, informal and creative way to engage diverse peoples and bridge some of the perceptual boundaries that can exist between different organisations. Richard O'Byrne from the Maritime division coordinated the day, bringing rangers, councillors, scientists and other agencies together for informal discussions. Mark Rodrigue from Parks Vic was on hand to provide a detailed perspective of the Marine Parks and to give an overview of the Two Bays program. Libby Jude, who is the manager of Mornington Peninsula National Park , also shared the perspective from the terrestrial park point of view. Stuart Hugh, also from Parks, who is overseeing the National park at Pt Nepean , gave a thorough briefing of the plans for this park which is still in process after a hand over from the Federal Government. Much of the land previously was a military site. It was through strong community activism that the land remains in public ownership and will keep its environmental, cultural and historical values alive and intact for everyone to enjoy.

It is interesting that the mini talks that people give on Pelican are given greater context and liveliness by the sheer fact of being in the environment, rather than in a neutral office environs. Information becomes active, engagement is real and things are understood on a visceral level rather than just abstractly.

The councillors were given a tour of South Channel fort. The structure was built in the 1880's as part of a network of outer defences for Port Phillip Bay. The fort is an artificial island (with the claim to fame that it is Victoria's only artificial island) built up on 14,000 tonnes of bluestone boulders and concrete with sand overburden. It was actually used for storing dredging explosives until the 1980's. The interior of the fort is a series of tunnels with connecting rooms. There is a lovely story in The Age archives about the last person to live on the island here. The island is now one of three important breeding sites for the vulnerable White-faced Storm-Petrel and is surrounded by some healthy seagrass sites. It is also occasional home to the Little Penguin, Black-faced Cormorant and the Australian Fur Seal.

The day was viewed as a great success by all the participants and the proof of that will hopefully be in the increased dialogue and understandings developed between the different organisations involved in the day. This is the third year that the Bays and Maritime Division from Parks have used the Two Bays program to increase council awareness and connection to their work and gain knowledge of issues from the council perspective. The last two years we have worked in the Southern part of the Bay, connecting with councillors through the ABM (Association of Bayside Municipalities). The ABM have been keen supporters of Two Bays over the last 6 years. 

All photos in this post are by Michelle Quach.

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.