February has been an exciting month with so much to report. We have been blessed with awesome visibility and blue warm water. It has been one of the best summers that in recent memory and La Nina has bought a refreshing change from the usual prevailing NE winds and murky cold green water that our summer months are known for.
Myself and Charlie organised a shore dive / social at Kurnell and had a reasonable turn out. David Faulks was one of the divers who turned and managed to snap the first weedy sea-dragon of the day and his brand-new beast of a camera setup. What a delightful shutter-christening! We hope to run some more of these in the coming months and want to encourage our newer members to come along and meet some of the older crew.
We also did a trip to Narooma in Feb with a bunch of underwater photographers and dived near perfect conditions. Her article about that trip follows later in this months Bulletin.
We have seen an explosion of sightings and interest in Glaucus atlanticus, Glaucilla bennettae and Glaucilla marginatus a.k.a blue dragons, which have been decorating the foreshores and rock pools of the East Coast. Lou's article showcases some of these sightings and references a new Facebook interest group set up for those that cannot get enough of these creatures.
Since you are reading this in March (or later) you'd have noticed that we are a little late collating the Feb bulletin. At the time of publishing, Pablo and Greer have just organised and run a fantastic initiative with URG partnering with Take3ForTheSea and AVEDA for Clean Up Australia Day. The event was a great success and despite rough seas and being unable to dive, the team participated in a micro-plastics survey and the results are being sent to Macquarie University. We hope to have an article about this included in the March Bulletin. It needs to be called out the immense effort Pablo and Greer put into arranging this partnership. Teaser-alert: the publicity URG has received has been substantial and some exciting prospects are on the horizon as a result. I'll leave it at this for now!
March is shaping up to be a great month of activity. Next weekend is the Sea Slug Census being run by Josh Moloney. Check out the event on Facebook for more details or reach out via email if you want join us - https://www.facebook.com/events/1049316478925355. This is the first Sea Slug Census Inter-location Challenge with 5 different events scheduled across the country in March.
We also have Reef Life Survey towards the end of March so keep an eye on your inbox for comms about that.
Duncan Heuer