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The Sydney Underwater Gazette

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25.01.2022 Our monthly summary of the observations on what's happening below the waterline, powered by the VIZ group

24.01.2022 A fascinating article on the biology of flatworms, you know, those little worms you may think to be nudibranches, but they are not. Thanks to Mike Scotland for the opportunity to share his manuscript published on the free and captivating Dive Log Australasia magazine. To access to the full article click https://user-80925338.cld.bz/Dive-Log-Australasia1/18/

23.01.2022 Simon Marnie and our Steve Coutts discussing the Sydney Pygmy Pipehorses this morning during the weekly Underwater Bulletin on ABC Radio

23.01.2022 Inquisitive boaters fishing scuba divers and and Port Jackson shark behaviour this morning on air

22.01.2022 More Sea Turtles spotted but, more importantly, we have added some colour to the gloomy table! How about that? Cabbage Tree Bay is still leading. New entrants at Magic Point and Reef Beach. Green Turtles vs Hawksbill Turtles 21:6 See this and more at https://www.viz.org.au/fish-tracking/sea-turtle-tracking

21.01.2022 Our chat this morning at the Australian Museum, joined by Dr. Stephen Keable (Collection Manager of Marine Invertebrates at the Australian Museum)

18.01.2022 The nudibranch and sea slug. Find out more tomorrow morning as I talk to Simon Marnie on ABC Sydney about these colourful critters. Tune in around 6:15am

17.01.2022 Sydney Pygmy Pipehorse

17.01.2022 What is Redmap? Professor Gretta Pecl, founder of Redmap, interviewed about the challenges and the achievements of the largest Australian marine biology & citizen science project. We can all be part of it by keeping an eye on the target species that you will see in the interview and reporting them either on the Redmap website or using the excellent Redmap app.

13.01.2022 A passionate Steve talking about one of his favourite subjects this morning on ABC Radio: nudibranchs!

11.01.2022 Another month, another underwater story to tell! Please note that we have moved our repository to Viz On Web https://www.viz.org.au/fish-tracking/viz-tracking-project

08.01.2022 After a Mola Mola spotted off the coast of the Royal National Park in July, here is another one down in Shellharbour last week. A Mola Mola (AKA Sunfish or "Swimming Head" in Germany) looks very bizarre, like a head without a body, and can reach 3 meters in diameter. It’s the heaviest bony fish (up to 1 ton), considering whales are mammals and sharks don’t have bones but cartilage. The Australian museum has a few of them: in 1882 four of them were captured in the harbour and ...in Manly and, being so spectacular, it was decided to display three of them at the Australian Museum. Since they could not pass through the door they had to be hauled with a pulley through a big window. The forth specimen ended up in the Natural history Museum of London and it has been recently restored. Thanks to our friend Craig Taylor and to Shellharbour Scuba for sharing this rare document! See more

08.01.2022 One would doubt that in 2020 there is still much more to be discovered under the waterline, yet scientists estimate that 91 percent of life under the sea hasn’t been discovered yet and more than 80 percent of the ocean has never been explored (https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ocean-species.html) The reason is the complexity of conducting explorations thousands of meters below the surface with a pressure equivalent of the weight of a car on a fingertip, but also the lack of... investment in exploring something that, by being unknown, carries unpredictable returns. A catch-22 which makes the ocean our last frontier on Earth. A few weeks ago we already discussed quantum leaps in our marine knowledge thanks to expeditions such as the HMS Challenger 150 years ago, but the reality is that there is so much unknown that new species may be discovered any time, even in locations where recreational divers have been going for years. Today we want to talk about a new species that has been classified just two weeks ago: the Stigmatopora harastii This species is named after David Harasti, one of the first to recognize S. harastii as being a new species. David has stated he counts pipefish to fall asleep. Harasti’s Pipefish and the Red Wide-bodied Pipefish are the common names. It’s a pipefish, which means it looks a bit like a seahorse but it’s straight instead of curled, red in colour. It is a relative of the Weedy Seadragon that we have been talking about a few times. It has been found at Jervis Bay, Shellharbour and Botany Bay, at depth of 10-25m and they are pretty small being 14 cm in length It was first reported in 2002 by underwater photographers. Discovering a new species is an interesting process: divers may have seen it for decades but it’s only when a biologist takes notice of something different that a possible new species gets investigated, also specimens need to be collected for a proper DNA analysis. 3 specimens that were used for this process are stored at the Australian Museum. See more

07.01.2022 Hi Ocean Lovers I’d love to invite you to the next SeaBees Underwater Working Bee Everyone is welcome ... https://fb.me/e/1IdgfEiMs

05.01.2022 We happily share this interesting post by our friend Steve Walsh, it's a postcast about sea dragons and the discovery of a third type of sea dragons, the "Ruby", only 5 years ago (at minute 8)

03.01.2022 In our chat this morning: the Octopus Australis and the HMS Challenger expedition who first found one 150 years ago.