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Roebuck Bay, Broome, WA (Australia): 15 - 17 December 2008
Monitoring in Roebuck has recommenced with the appointment of a new coordinator, Fiona Bishop. The teams were out on the seagrass meadows in front of Broome township over a 3 day period to monitor their 3 sites.
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Hervey Bay and Great Sandy Strait, Qld (Australia): 12 - 14 December 2008
A quick visit to Hervey Bay and Great Sandy Strait by Seagrass-Watch HQ provided the opportunity to catch up with Seagrass-Watch teams and revisit some sites.
Burrum Heads seagrass continues to improve and substantial Zostera meadows have grown within 50-100m of the monitoring sites. On the edge of the dense meadows were numerous dugong feeding/grazing trails - evidence that the dugongs preferred the less dense and possibly more nutritious (faster growing/extending) seagrass plants. Also within the denser meadow were large ray pits - areas where stingrays had excavated the seagrass to feed.
Further south in Tin Can bay, the meadows have changed relatively little. The meadow is generally low cover (<5%) and scattered across the intertidal sand bank adjacent to Norman Point. These banks are heavily scoured by tidal movement, so it is not surprising the seagrass cover is so low. Hanne, Gordon and Pat efficiently monitored the site - their last monitoring event for 2008.
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Burrum Heads
12 December 2008
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Tin Can Bay
14 December 2008
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Dhimurru (NT, Australia): 15 December 2008
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Singapore : 12 - 13 December 2008
It's a very special monitoring trip as we also celebrate the newly wed Mr and Mrs Lam our first wedding in TeamSeagrass of two Team members! After a quick celebratory toast and cake, we're off with Melvin in the wonderfully named boat, for a monitoring session on Cyrene Reef. It's busy work monitoring on Cyrene as we have lots of species on this reef. Although the reef is next to our busy world-class port and ringed by petrochemical plants, the meadows are very rich. Text: Team Seagrass-Singapore. TeamSeagrass Website Click here
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Cyrene Reef
12 December 2008
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Pulau Semakau
13 December
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It's our last monitoring session for 2008! And a large team of 31 is off to do the job at Pulau Semakau. Because of the huge turnout, several regular volunteers kindly agreed to be team leaders for each of the three sites. The newly weds Mr and Mrs Lam are setting up the GPS. While Eric takes more snazzy shots with his evil fish eye lens. Then we're off to the shores, thanks to a ride from the friendly NEA staff. Semakau monitoring involves a lot of walking. Kilometres of it to match the kilometres of seagrass meadows and shores!
Below is the team at Site 2 facing the broad seagrass meadows, with the huge oil rig in the background. The area off Pulau Semakau is the designated zone for parking oil rigs which are in Singapore for repairs or maintenance. There are currently two rigs and at least one humungous LNG tanker at this zone.
There's so much to see and discover that everyone is still at the reef edge even as the sun sets! Nevertheless we got back safely before dark, and didn't donate too much blood to the ferocious mosquitos in the forest trail. . Text: Team Seagrass-Singapore. TeamSeagrass Website Click here
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Correct citation: McKenzie, LJ., Yoshida, RL., Mellors, JE & Coles, RG. (2006 - 2010). Seagrass-Watch. www.seagrasswatch.org. 228pp. Disclaimer: The views expressed on this site are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Queensland Government. Website designed by McKenzie, LJ., Yoshida, RL. |
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