Marine Life Society of
South Australia Inc.
Newsletter
August 2007 No. 346
“understanding,
enjoying & caring for our oceans”
Next Meeting
This will be the
August Meeting and it will be held as usual at the Conservation Centre on the 15th August commencing at 8.00pm.
Our guest speaker is Barry Brook who will be discussing
Climate Change from the marine point of view.
CONTENTS
Notes on a
Recent Dive (David Muirhead)
Julian Tenison Woods, Catholic Priest &
Scientist (Steve Reynolds)
2008 Calendars
We now have the 2008 calendars for you to sell.
The main pics are shown below. Please contact me to arrange delivery. 82704463
by David Muirhead
Finally
re-entered briny after 2+ months trying but weather defeating till 9&10
June when calm, reasonably clear at last!!
Quick look late
pm Fri-testing gear really/too close to dusk to see much but saw a Rhino
Pipefish about 12-14 cm long (guesstimate only), feeding along inshore edge of
a shallow sandy depression filled with detritus/fragmented dead zostera/posidonia etc inside the very first bit of calcarenite reef one meets as one swims out from shore, in
about 2 m depth.
Rhino Pipefish – David Muirhead
A proper dive
here next day at around 1300 hrs was better-still gloomy but up to 5m viz, and
I saw at least 4-5 Rhinos, varying from 12-14cm to perhaps 16-18cm,and 2-3
Briggs varying from about 14cm to about 20cm, and one adult (?)widebody with some wideness apparent but I'll await images
before being a bit more sure re ID.
Kevin, most of
the outlier seagrass clumps are down to tufts/damage++ (?normal
seasonal or ??excessive siltation via the huge plume of dirt post-downpour in
Feb when we had 3 inches rain at Normy falling on drought-stricken catchments!)
and some shallow flat largely bare calcarenite ‘reefs’ are uncovered which I’ve not seen here
for a long time, by the way.
But of greatest
interest was my suspicion, sadly not actually witnessed, that an adult Slender
Weed Whiting (Siphonognathus attenuatus)
might have been cleaning an adult Briggs Crested Pipefish when I interrupted.
Briggs Crested Pipefish – David Muirhead
While I’ve
suspected for some while these little inshore fishes were facultative cleaners,
based for example on their possible guild sign ie large tail-spot, and their
preferred habitats which correlate closely with those of our commoner
inshore pipefish species (eg widebody, spotted, rhino, Briggs, Port
Philip) eg sandy edges of seagrass/edges of low rocky reefs/rubble/detritus-filled
sandy depressions, this was the nearest I’ve come to witnessing such.
While watching a
rhino pf slowly moving alongshore at the edge of detritus-filled gutter in
1.5-2m depth, with only weak outgoing tidal current, out of the corner of my
eye I saw a sudden very obvious flexing movement made by an adult (the largest
seen that dive) Briggs Crested Pipe Fish which was about 2.5 -3 m away from me,
on sandy bottom albeit still with a fair scattering of detritus, inshore from
my position, ie at base of gently up sloping sand which extended from here
all the way in to the watermark.
I then saw the
solitary Slender Weed Whiting (the only fish seen on this dive other than
one southern goatfish and one juvenile smooth toadfish) which was
hovering right above it and clearly interested in it, albeit watching me also
to see what I’d do.
Stupidly I moved
closer to see if this was some type of intra-species body language ie between
two Briggs cpf’s but there were no other pipefish of
any type in the vicinity.
But the slender
Weed Whiting backed off behind a tall bit of drift brown algae which it seemed
to favour as a station. Unusually it made no attempt to flee even when I
approached to within about 0.5m and despite there being only bare sandy
shallows behind it and with me ‘blocking’ its retreat back to the shelter of
the low reef and grassy areas. So I took one or two shots of it, (which may
have scatter spoiling them, but that's irrelevant as the pipefish isn’t even
going to appear in the image(s)).
Slender Weed Whiting – David Muirhead
Both the pipefish and the? cleaner seemed annoyed
as if I was indeed interrupting something special.
Well, that’s
about all there is to it-not nearly enough to prove my suspicion, but enough to
whet my appetite!
It’s perhaps
also worth noting that these slender Weed Whiting are quite common in these
very shallow areas, and while slightly more robust than any pipefish I’ve ever
seen they and their mouths are not big enough I’d say to prey upon most
adult or near-adult pipefish species with overlapping distributions, so any
actual interspecies interaction would be likely to involve cleaning-not
forgetting that there are often large population
densities of inshore pipefish in the habitats in question.
So if southern
temperate inshore pipefish ever need cleaning, and being slow-moving demersals they probably do, what better-placed creature is
there for the task than the Slender Weed Whiting?
Another
attribute this latter displays to great effect is the ability to rapidly change
from readily visible to virtually invisible in the water column: ie tho’ drab cream or matt-white with light to dark
brownish almost black markings when in ‘easily seen’ guise, it can adapt
quickly to the ambient lighting by becoming silvery/translucent with only very
pale markings (even the tail spot vanishes but I’m not sure if that is via
colour change or simply via closing the initially fanned-out caudal fin rays)
such that it is suddenly very difficult to locate even though it might then
take the opportunity to move only a short distance of 20-50cm before ‘coming
into view’ again. This seemingly was a type of inquisitive behaviour, I’ve
always assumed till now, but what if they are sizing us up as clients or
waiting for us to move on so they can resume tending unseen pipefish or similar
clients?!
Slender Weed Whiting – David Muirhead
Scoresby, I dare
say little if any work’s been done on pipefish parasitic loads, even less on
gut contents of our local Slender Weed Whiting, but maybe this is a fruitful
area to pursue for you or one or other PHD student or etc.
If nothing else, please put this speculative rant in the ‘Muirhead Cleaning
Behaviour Rubbish Ideas’ Archive on your PC, or delete for more complete peace
of mind!
Julian Tenison Woods,
Catholic Priest & Scientist
by Steve Reynolds
Whilst scanning through
“2002 Sea Shells” by Neville Coleman in order to identify a gastropod mollusc
photographed by David Muirhead, I noticed that the shell species in question
was described by Tenison Woods. Father Julian Tenison Woods was the co-founder
of the Catholic Order of the Sisters of St Joseph with
Sister Mary MacKillop in 1866. He led an
amazing life as both a Catholic priest and a scientist. The shell species in
question was the spindle shell Latiris
spicer. It was
described by Tenison Woods in 1876.
Here below is the photo
taken by David Muirhead of two specimens: -
Photo: Two specimens of the spindle shell Latiris spiceri
(taken by David Muirhead)A further scan through
the pages of “2002 Sea Shells” by Neville
Coleman revealed that Tenison Woods also described the Minute Margin Shell, Cystiscus minutissima and the Umbilicate Murex, Muricopsis
umbilicata (both in
1876), and the Fan-like Bittersweet, Tucetona
flabellata* in 1877.
*Tucetona flabellata is shown as
being described by “Tennison-woods”.
N.B. All of the three names
mentioned above are not the original names used by Tenison Woods. The names
used by him have since been changed due to reviews of the species concerned.
The Umbilicate Murex, Muricopsis umbilicata, for
example, was named the Umbilcated Murexsul,
Murexsul umbilicatus by Tenison
Woods in 1876.
A scan of the pages of
“South Australian Shells” by Bernard Cotton (published by the SA Museum in
1976) revealed that Tenison Woods also described the following shell species: -
Slender Slit Worm*, which
he named Pyxipoma
weldii, in 1875;
Flask Cockle, named Gastrochaena tasmanica in 1876;
White Band Creeper, named
Notoseila albosutura in 1876;
Clark Buccinum
Whelk, named Tasmeuthria
clarkei in 1876;
Tasmanian Buccinum Whelk, named Josepha tasmanica in 1879;
Brazier Litozamia, named Litozamia
brazieri in 1876;
and the (already mentioned) Umbilcated Murexsul, named Murexsul umbilicatus in 1876.
*Worm shells resemble
marine worms but they are true gastropod molluscs.
N.B. Many (if not all) of the
above scientific (Latin) names may have changed since “South Australian Shells”
by Bernard Cotton was published (by the SA Museum) in 1976.
According to the web page
at: http://www.southaustralianhistory.com.au/woods.htm
Julian Tenison Woods
was born on 15th
November 1832 at Southwark, England. He started his working life with the
“London Times” newspaper but he moved to the south of France because of poor
health. He taught at Mont Bel (the
Marist College at Toulon) in the south of France, in 1854. Here he developed
an interest in geology and natural science. He met Bishop Robert Willson of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania*) whilst he was in
France. The Bishop persuaded him to go to Tasmania to teach at the Catholic
schools there. His sailed to Tasmania on the Berenecia. The
voyage took some 3½ months. He arrived in Hobarton
(Hobart Town) in January 1855 and soon started his new job as Prison Chaplain,
even though he was not yet a priest.
*(The name of Van Diemen’s Land was changed to that
of Tasmania by Statute in 1855 and took effect on 1st
January 1856, some 12 months after Tenison Woods’ arrival there.)
He moved to Adelaide in South Australia before the
end of the year to work at the “Adelaide Times” newspaper. He became sub-editor of the paper and editor
of the Catholic paper “The Chaplet”. While working for the “Adelaide Times”, he
also studied at the Sevenhill College.
On 4th January
1857 he was ordained as a priest at St Patrick's Church in Adelaide. He became
increasingly concerned about the lack of Catholic education in his district.
These concerns eventually resulted in the establishment of a school at Penola.
He also assisted Mary MacKillop with the founding of the Order of the Sisters
of St Joseph in 1866. That same year he was recalled to Adelaide by Bishop
Sheil to take up the posts of Director General of Catholic Education, Chairman
of the Board, Inspector of Schools, Chaplain and private secretary to the
Bishop. During this time, he planned and
established many schools (which catered mainly for poor Catholic children) in
Adelaide and country towns. He was also instrumental in the building of
churches at Penola, Robe and Mount Gambier. In 1870, Bishop Quin of Bathurst
invited him to do missionary work in the eastern colonies. For more than ten
years, he travelled and preached, started schools and was kept intensely busy
with the work of both the Sisters of St Joseph and the Brothers of the Sacred
Heart. He would be on the road with his dray for days on end. He often slept
either under the stars or under the tarpaulin of his dray, using his saddle as
a pillow. Although he was always extremely busy, he still found the time to
observe nature and carry out scientific investigations and writings. He was
particularly interested in geological matters. He had a substantial mineral
collection and, during his wide travels, he added many specimens to his
collection. His first article was about the Mount Gambier volcano. It was
published in the “Adelaide Register” on 1st
October 1857. The following month he delivered a paper titled ‘Observations on
Metamorphic Rocks in South Australia’ in Melbourne. An article titled ‘A
volcano in Japan’ was printed in the “Melbourne Argus” of 21st
January 1889 just 8½ months before he died. By the time that he died on 7th
October 1889, he had written several books, more than two hundred scientific
papers and delivered numerous lectures. He didn’t only write about volcanoes
though. Following a visit to the Victoria River District in the Northern
Territory, he wrote for the “Sydney
Morning Herald” about his experiences. Many of his
subjects were concerned with the geology of South Australia, Victoria and
Tasmania. He wrote about fossils, glaciation, shells, corals and fungi. He also
reported on the goldfields of both South Australia and Queensland. He also
reported on coal and the geography of Borneo, Java, Malaysia and Japan. He even
wrote a paper titled 'History of the Discovery and Exploration of Australia'
which was published in 1865. During 1883, he visited Singapore, Malacca, Japan,
China, Java and Siam. The King of Holland awarded him a gold medal for his
scientific efforts as he had looked for and reported on the minerals in some of
the Dutch colonies. England asked him to investigate the occurrence of coal in
some of its territories. On his return to Australia, he thoroughly explored the
mineral districts of the Northern Territory. In 1885, he stated that Arnhem
Land in the Territory would one day become one of the greatest mining centres
in Australia. He was given many honours during his life including being made a
Fellow of the Geological Society of London and an Honorary Member of the Royal
Society of each of New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia. He was also
an Honorary Member of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, the
Royal Geographical Society of both Queensland and New South Wales, and the New
Zealand Institute.
According
to the web page at: http://www.sosj.org.au/mary/j_exhibition.html
he was the fifth surviving child of James Dominic Woods and Henrietta Maria St Eloy Tenison. They had seven sons and a daughter but three of
the children died. His father worked as a parliamentary reporter for “The
Times” and three of his brothers pursued careers in journalism. Tenison Woods
also shared this family gift with words. From his earliest years, he showed an
interest in natural history and, with his brothers, he collected and preserved
butterflies, beetles, shells and rocks. He was fascinated by science and he
made the most of any opportunity to increase his knowledge and skill. While
teaching English and pursuing theological studies at the Marist College (Mont Bel) at Toulon in the south of France in 1854, he also
enrolled in classes in drawing, philosophy, natural history and chemistry. When
a cholera outbreak caused the college to close in mid-1854, he returned to
England and attended a mini-course of lectures on scientific subjects. He had
no formal training in science apart from these short periods. His time as a lay
chaplain to the convicts of Van Diemen’s Land in 1855 did not work out and he
left Hobart Town. He eventually moved to Adelaide where his brother James had
settled. Two early attempts to reach his goal of ordination failed. In mid-1856
Adelaide's first bishop, Francis Murphy, offered him the opportunity to
complete his studies for the priesthood with the Jesuit priests at Sevenhill.
This time he succeeded and Bishop Murphy ordained him as a priest on 4th
January 1857. He served as a priest in the vast parish of Penola in the
southeast of South Australia for ten years*. He co-founded the Sisters of St
Joseph with Mary MacKillop there in 1866. He became the Director of Catholic
education in Adelaide from 1867 to 1871 and played a major role in the
establishment of a Catholic education system. From 1871 to 1883, he specialised
in the preaching of missions in Queensland, Tasmania and New South Wales and
then spent some three years in South-East Asia.
*It was whilst he was in
Penola that he continued his interest in science. Though residing far from
other men of science, he established contact with Ferdinand von Mueller, the
Government Botanist of Victoria, Frederick McCoy, Professor of Natural Science
at the University of Melbourne and W. B. Clarke, the geologist clergyman, in
Sydney. He also corresponded with overseas scientists, including Sir Charles Lyell, the great British geologist. Von Mueller encouraged
him to publish his first formal paper, ‘Observations on Some Metamorphic rocks
in South Australia’ in the Transactions of the Philosophical Institute of
Victoria in November 1857. The papers that followed during his years in Penola
(1857-67), showed him to be a perceptive and careful observer, conversant with
the scientific literature of the day, and an excellent writer. He became well
known as a scientist with the publication of his first book, “Geological
Observations in South Australia” in 1862. The book was a first attempt at a
systematic examination of the geology of South Australia and it marked a
noteworthy achievement in the history of such endeavours in the colony. British
periodicals and the colonial press both praised the book's style and content.
In an editorial in May 1863, the “South Australian Register” declared that it
knew of no other book by an Australian which would bear comparison with
“Geological Observations. Tenison Woods attempted to provide a model in the
book for the general reader to make geological observations in their own area
and so contribute to the geological knowledge of Australia. In October 1857, he
enunciated a basic principle that guided all his scientific writings - theory
and generalisation could be validly attempted only when the hard work of
‘detail’ had been accomplished. He believed that no generalisation of the
natural history of an area, or comparison of one area with another could be
undertaken until the fauna and flora, living and fossil, of the places had been
adequately described. When he found himself in places where the description of
local species needed attention, he turned to that work. Many of his
contributions to the scientific journals thus consisted of description after
description of various fossil and living molluscs, sea urchins, corals and
other invertebrates. Where close observations had already been made and
recorded, he worked well beyond taxonomy. Both George Bentham,
the famous English botanist, and Ferdinand von Mueller, in their great work
“Flora Australiensis” (1863-1878), had already
described and catalogued plant species. Tenison Woods began to investigate the
range and abundance of plants in Queensland, mainly of the more northerly
section of the State. His five-part 1882 series ‘Botanical Notes on Queensland’
provided, at that time, the most informative ecological information on
Queensland’s plants. The manner in which he studied types of vegetation, as
distinct from flora, resembled the approach that plant ecologists developed in
the early 20th
century. Whatever the level at which he worked, he saw himself as a mainstream
contributor engaged in helping to unravel the natural history of Australia. The
Linnean Society of New South Wales elected him as
their President in both 1879 and 1880. He was then made a vice-president for
the following few years. He wrote a book titled “Fish and Fisheries of New
South Wales”. It formed part of the New South Wales display at the Fisheries
Exhibitions in 1883 and it won a diploma in London and a medal in Amsterdam. It
is probable that when he named the Slender Slit Worm, Pyxipoma weldii, in 1875, it was in honour of his
old friend Frederick Weld, a former governor of both Western Australia and
Tasmania. The arrival of the Redemptorists, a
religious order of priests devoted to preaching parish missions,
in the Maitland diocese by 1883 meant that bishops no longer needed his
services. Frederick Weld, who was the governor of the Straits Settlement at
that time, invited him to investigate the mineral resources of the Malay
Peninsula. During his three years in South-East Asia, in addition to reports, he
wrote on his travels for the “Sydney Morning Herald”. He also wrote some short
pieces for the London scientific journal “Nature” and a few papers for the
Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. He contributed just one article to
the Australian scientific periodicals. The Linnean
Society published his ‘Report on the Geology and Physical Geography of the
State of Perak’ in December 1884. Many of his other
observations made in places such as Malaysia, Japan, Borneo and the Philippines
were copiously recorded in his notebooks and these were published on his return
to Australia. In 1888, he received the medal of the Royal Society of New South
Wales (and £25) for his essay ‘On the Anatomy and Life History of the Mollusca Peculiar to Australia’. The Council of the Royal
Society of New South Wales awarded him the Clarke Medal for 1888 in recognition
of his contribution to Australian natural history, especially in the field of
geology. He died on 7th
October 1889 after a long illness, just a few weeks short of reaching
fifty-seven years of age. Scientific
societies of Australasia were said to have lamented his death as a severe loss.
Professor Ralph Tate of Adelaide University acknowledged him as one of the
leading Australasian naturalists whose writings in geology, palaeontology,
botany and zoology had become a part of the story of scientific progress in
Australasia. He also paid tribute to the influence of his enthusiasm for
science on his fellow naturalists and, above all, he praised him as a devoted
priest and an earnest and powerful preacher. His requiem mass at St. Mary's
Cathedral was attended by many members of the scientific community. William
Archer, a long-time friend, organised an appeal and erected a fitting monument
to his memory in Waverley Cemetery in Sydney
where he
was buried. In 1974, a 780m crest in the D’Aguilar Range, located northwest of Brisbane, was
officially designated 'Mount Tenison Woods' in recognition of his achievements.
I recommend a trip to
Penola, SA to visit the Mary MacKillop Interpretive Centre if you wish to find
out more about Tenison Woods. It is located at the corner of Portland St and
Petticoat Lane in Penola. The Centre’s two main galleries display information
on the lives of Mary MacKillop and Father Julian Tenison Woods. A feature of
the Centre is the Woods-MacKillop School House which was built in 1867. The
school house has been restored and it contains a museum dedicated to Mary
MacKillop and Father Julian Tenison Woods. The phone number for the Centre is
8737 2092.
Father Tenison Woods arrived at
Penola in 1857 to work there as a Parish Priest. Whilst he was there, he became
the region’s first palaeontologist. He wrote
prolifically on the geology of the region, including Naracoorte Caves and its
fossils. The centenary of his arrival in Penola was celebrated there during Palaeontology Week in March 2007. On Sunday 25th
March, Professor Elery Hamilton-Smith, Chair of the
World Commission on Protected Areas Working Group on Cave and Karst Protection, opened the Goudey Collection, featuring
fossils and marine species named by Tenison Woods at the Mary MacKillop
Interpretive Centre. Christopher and Lorraine Goudey of Lara, Victoria,
annotated and assembled the unique and extensive Goudey Collection. Professor
Hamilton-Smith had lead a tour of the Naracoorte Caves
the day before, where Tenison Woods investigated bone deposits. His steps
around the caves were re-traced through his 1862 book “Geological Explorations
in South Australia”.