Wavelength Reef Cruises in Port Douglas | Travel and transport

Wavelength Reef Cruises

Locality: Port Douglas

Phone: +61 7 4099 5031

Address: Shop 12, Reef Marina, Wharf Street 4877 Port Douglas, QLD, Australia

Website: http://www.wavelength.com.au

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24.01.2022 Great spawning event at Opal Reef this year! We've just got back from a two night trip to Opal Reef on Wavelength 4 with some researchers from UTS (more info soon). Some spawning occurred on Friday night but a lot more on Saturday night with some obvious spawn slicks this Sunday morning. Really fantastic to see. We had some samples of Acropora hyacinthus and Acropora tenuis spawning on the boat for some experiments before the fertilised larvae were released. We also recorded really good spawning of a range of Acropora colonies on our coral nursery frames after growing them from small fragments.

24.01.2022 We were really lucky on Wavelength at the weekend to see a pod of around 20 to 30 false killer whales near the shore off Cape Tribulation. It was incredible to watch them swim with the boat with loud singing for several minutes. At the time we were on the way home with a group of Tangaroa Blue volunteers after a beach clean up at Mangkalba (Cedar Bay) which is not accessable by road. One of the volunteers (Nathan Jemmett) took this video clip on his phone. Tangaroa Blue Great Barrier Reef Marine Park @ReefClean

21.01.2022 This almost looks like a dream of snorkelling on a coral reef ...... but it's real. The picture was taken by John just today at Opal Reef. The snorkeller is marine biologist crew-member Lorna leading a group of guests just above the camera out of shot.

20.01.2022 Why we love this time of year for visiting the reef! (Apologies to those that can't get here!!!!)

18.01.2022 These photos are a selection from yesterday's Wavelength trip to Opal Reef. We visit 3 sites in a day to showcase some of the GBR's incredible diversity of reef types and creatures. Sightings yesterday included: green turtle, hawksbill turtle, white tip reef shark, epaulette shark, octopus, cuttlefish, Queensland groper, barracuda, lots of fish and coral and spinner dolphins on the way home. All photos are by awesome Master Reef Guide Kasey Barnes. These photos of the day are free by Dropbox transfer. As an extra bonus we currently have a summer special of 20% discount!

12.01.2022 If you didn't get to see the ABC "Reef Live" broadcasts from Friday and Sunday they are still available on ABC iview. Underwater night-time footage looks great so it's easy to underestimate the challenges of getting it - especially the amount of creatures in the water that are attracted to lights. This picture is Master Reef Guide Kasey Barnes on Wavelength at Opal Reef watching a small coral colony spawning on Saturday night. More than a few seconds in the same place can mean 100's of worms wriggling around, adding to other plankton and egg bundles all obscuring the view.

12.01.2022 When checking if corals are just about to spawn one thing to look for is if the egg bundles look like they are about to appear. Here's a good picture of what this looks like in practice - taken by Caitlin Lawson of an Acropora tenuis colony. Look closely and you really can see the pink egg bundles just ready inside the polyps. Caitlin was on the recent trip we did staying at Opal Reef during coral spawning. She's a post-doc researcher at University of Technology Sydney Future Reefs Program and investigates volatile gases from coral - in this case during spawning. https://twitter.com/CaitlinAlin/status/1335198398702440453

08.01.2022 We're very excited to see many of our Acropora corals on our 56 research coral nurseries at Opal Reef contain egg bundles likely to be released this weekend. We recorded some nursery corals spawning last year (a first for the GBR) but this year is bigger with more mature colonies (varying between 18 months and 30 months since we started growing them from small fragments). A way to check if Acropora corals are gravid is to break a small piece and look for egg bundles.

07.01.2022 The state of the reef has been in the media this month with opposite messages depending where you get your news. Bearing that in mind, how would you interpret these two photographs? a. Reef degradation over time. Most of the reef is now dead so why bother going to see it? b. The reef has recovered since bleaching a few years ago. Natural cycles happen, scientists just exaggerate problems to safeguard their jobs.... c. The reef is endangered but still has many really awesome areas. If we don't somehow change the trajectory, the awesome areas will become fewer over the coming decades and areas impacted by extreme weather events will be less likely to recover. Answer = c Both pictures were taken this week at different areas of Opal Reef. Opal is just one reef and is 9 square kms. Consider that the GBR has 3000 reefs and the marine park covers 344,400 square kms. The best source of information on reef health is GBRMPA and the Australian Institute of Marine Science, who both have loads of up-to-date reports on their websites. However, you can't understand the reef unless you visit it! And chances are that if you do visit it you will be taken to see the good bits! (photos John Edmondson)

05.01.2022 We’ve just been out on Wavelength deploying multiple larval settlement plates across a variety of locations around Opal Reef. It’s well known that larval supply, parrotfish grazing, predation by butterflyfish, sediment and algal competition all influence recruitment and recovery after an impact. Yet there are still many unknowns (especially at the micro-habitat scale), like why one area can recover faster than another spot just a couple of hundred metres away. This is a Wav...elength instigated project to understand more about Opal Reef ecology, but we owe a huge thank you to the brains behind the exercise, Prof Morgan Pratchet who is a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, based at James Cook University, Townsville. He’s pictured here installing the settlement plates along with Master Reef Guide Kasey Barnes (with literally a helping hand from UTS PhD student Lorna Howlett). Prof Pratchett has been incredibly generous with his time to come along and help us out. It's a great example of reef researchers working with tourism in the interests of site stewardship. The plates will stay in until January when they'll be analysed. Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef TTNQ Coral Nurture Program Master Reef Guides pc John Edmondson

03.01.2022 This is a small selection of 100+ photos taken by Master Reef Guide Kasey Barnes on Friday's Wavelength trip to Opal Reef. On our trips we pick three different locations each day out of our wide selection of sites and try to showcase as much diversity as possible.