Simon Mustoe's Blog: Wildlife in the Balance, page 11

Snorkelling at Wakatobi Luxury Resort, 2024 trip report

Sorry for the long silence. It’s been a bit of a busy time. I need to get this story done as I’m about to hit the ocean again with Pindito. We have a full trip about to depart for Komodo tomorrow. A couple of weeks ago, however, we took a small group to Wakatobi. For its conservation, among other things, it’s a place I’ve always wanted to visit. There are so many things I could write about, but for now, here is the trip report of our week featuring snorkelling at Wakatobi Luxury Resort.

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Habitat at Ricketts Point and winter regrowth

I braved the cold today and managed an hour and a half swim. There aren’t a lot of fish about right now. If you look offshore towards Portarlington you’ll see a lot of birds. Most of the fish life moves out into the middle of the bay in winter, which is a topic I covered in a recent blog. Today was the chance to take a look at the habitat at Ricketts Point as it grows in the winter.

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Exclusive discount, Whale Swims Tonga, 28 Aug – 5 Sep

First, a big thank you for signing up or buying the snorkelling guide. I realise it’s a bit cold at the moment but spring will soon be here. I’ve been a little bit quiet of late too, as I don’t tend to get in the sea so often at this time of year.

I did want to mention, in passing, that I’m leading a trip to swim with humpbacks in Tonga late August.

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Reflections of Eden by Biruté Galdikas: Book Review

It took Biruté over twenty years to begin to understand Orangutans. This is because it takes at least two generations to confirm the way any animal behaves. For female Orangutans, that’s at least sixteen years. Before this, it was a widely held belief that Orangutans couldn’t be studied. Like her beloved Orangutans, for Biruté’s work to succeed, she needed to disappear. She became invisible in the forest for many years. Biruté’s consummate patience even led to her being ‘adopted’ by an Indonesia...

Jane Goodall’s Reasons for Hope Tour

Last night we went to see Jane Goodall speak at the Palais in St Kilda, Melbourne. It’s Jane’s 90th birthday this year. Last time I was at the Palais, I was watching the band First Aid Kit. Years before that, Nick Cave. It’s surprising to see a gentile, elderly lady stand in front of a packed house, speaking quietly with the air of a grandmother. Jane would occasionally set the record straight when a question or idea strayed off course.

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Port Phillip Bay snorkelling and water temperature

It’s starting to get cold! For many of us, Port Phillip Bay snorkelling and water temperature go hand-in-hand. I went for a swim last week (a proper one) without a wetsuit. It was 13.6 degrees. It’s dropped further this week and to be honest, it was slightly uncomfortable on the face yesterday morning, even though I was rugged up in a 5.5m sem-dry and hood. Nevertheless, I managed to find lots of sapsucking sea slugs, including a few of the cryptic ones I reported on just recently.

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Fat-handed Shrimp at Ricketts Point, plus Bearded Crab, 16 May

It might be the last chance for a few days so I dropped into the shallows at Ricketts today for an hour. I was only picking around the edges of the reef and the deepest it got was about 30cm. I went nearer the southern end, where the car park nearly ends. The reef there is a bit muddier on the top. This time of year, it grades through beds of sargassum and sea grass.

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Restoring soil biodiversity takes animals

A paper published this week in Current Biology describes some of the ideal mechanisms behind soil restoration. However, like many academic studies, it is questionably too complex and theoretical to be of practical use. It leaves me wondering how one would implement these measures. The authors point at several key factors: soil properties (S), climate (C), organisms (O), relief (R), parent material (P), age (A) and spatial position (N)’ adding ‘these factors interact in complex ways [and] underst...

Cryptic Sacoglossum in Port Phillip Bay, Sacoproteus smaragdinus, 5 May

After my successful swim yesterday I decided to look at the other side of fossil beach to the east. I had heard visibility was better there yesterday. That little pocket tends to be a little clearer on average, as it doesn’t seem as affected by currents circulating from the coast north and south. It was indeed clearer … but not much. Enough to make it attractive though. A few fiddler rays were nice finds. I found myself once again distracted by the cryptic sacoglossum in Port Phillip Bay.

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Sapsucking sea slugs at Beaumaris, 4 May

It never ceases to amaze me how different every swim can be. Today I dropped in on the fossil-beach side of the Beaumaris Motor Yacht Squadron and headed out to where it’s about 2m deep. Visibility wasn’t great but I was able to find not one but three species of sapsucker. These seas slugs have a very interesting life history as they effectively absorb the essence of plants into their bodies to become plant-like. Unlike nudibranchs, which are carnivorous, they are strictly vegetarian.

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