Marine
Life Society of South Australia Inc.
Newsletter
May
2005 No.
321
“understanding,
enjoying & caring for our oceans”
Next Meeting
This
will be our Annual general meeting and will be held at the Conservation
Centre, 120 Wakefield Street, Adelaide on Wednesday 18th May commencing at
7.30pm.
Our
guest speaker will be Scoresby Shepherd, our Patron, who is always worth
listening to.
Please bring a plate of food
to share in the interval.
Contents
Committee
Reports
Sharks Galore
Is Not a Bore (David Muirhead)
More on the
Moorara (Scoresby Shepherd)
Reminder
Notice
Memberships
are now due. Could you please pay the Treasurer as soon as possible or let us
know if you will not be rejoining.
Newsletter
Articles
I
am again very short of articles. Could you please create one soon. Any marine
related subject will do.
This
Newsletter
The hardcopy of the Newsletter is in black and white as usual. If members prefer a colour PDF version then please email me.
Committee
Nominations
ROLE
NOMINEE
NOMINATED BY
President Philip Hall
Self
Secretary Steve Reynolds
Self
Treasurer Phill McPeake
Self
Ctee 1 Chris
Hall
Self
Ctee 2 David
Muirhead
Self
There being a single nomination
for each position on the Committee then only a formal vote at the AGM to accept
these nominations is necessary under our Constitution.
2005 Annual General Meeting
Reports
President’s Report – Philip
Hall
2004/2005 has
been a very successful year in many areas for MLSSA.
Our membership
has been maintained and we seem to be attracting a younger element. I hope they
will take a great interest in the Society and become Committee Members when they
feel ready.
We have
continued to have good quality speakers at all our meetings and if you have
missed any then I can guarantee you missed a special event. Attendance has been
good but we always hope everyone will attend.
Members have
participated in both Reefwatch and KESAB dives. David and Chris have continued
to produce exceptional pictures which I am sure you all agree deserve to be in
our calendars and/or in the Photo Index.
The Photo
Index has been in great demand. Pictures have been used by a variety of
organisations and for presentations. Steve is to be congratulated in keeping an
effective record of the pictures. Phill is now in the process of digitizing all
the pictures. This will enable us to allow other organisations a better access
to the pictures and will safeguard them well into the
future.
The 2005
calendar has been a great success and the people who produced it must be thanked
for another splendid effort. It has more than broken even financially and we
have continued to attract sponsorship from DEH and PIRSA. Our 2006 calendar is
ready for the printers at the time of writing and we now have sponsorship from
the National Oceans Office, PIRSA and from Steri-flow, a private firm producing
filtration equipment. Due to David and Chris not doing much diving recently we
asked other divers to let us use some of their best pictures. The 2006 calendar
will have ten photographers credited altogether.
We applied for
a Volunteers Fund Grant for a laptop computer to be initially used for the
editing of the “Beachwash Guide”, which we began several years ago, by Chris
Hall. We were successful and obtained the sum of $1,200 towards the computer and
hope to have this booklet ready by the end of the year. A second grant has been
applied for. This would enable us to buy a digital projector to allow our
speakers and members the use of modern technology.
The Newsletter
has continued to be produced each month except for December when the Journal
took over. We have had excellent articles supplied and now members can have a
PDF version of the Newsletter sent directly to them.
In April the
Leafy Seadragon Festival was held in the Yankalilla area. MLSSA put on a display
in the Information Centre. Prior to this we supplied Leafy and Weedy pictures
for a display in Gay’s Arcade in the city for an arts collective called T’ARTS
(Textile and Arts Collective).
Margaret and I
gave two talks this year. The first was to the Belvue Heights Junior Field
Naturalists where we had about 100 children and parents for a very interesting
evening. The second was to the Field Naturalists Society in Adelaide and again
we had an interesting time. Further talks have been booked for later in the
year.
Neville
Skinner handled the Eight Mile Creek problem very well and a satisfactory result
has apparently occurred. Reports have appeared regularly in our
newsletter.
The Photo
Index has continued to expand both physically in the form of Main and Working
Copy slide sets and digitally on our website. We get several orders a year for
pictures from the PI and it does add to our coffers and in the form of
sponsorship for our Calendars. For this we must thank David and Chris for their
generosity and Phill for his slide scanning ability.
Danny Gibbins
has worked very hard on both the calendar and on the website. He does all the
work of keeping the PI up to date. I generally upload other changes such as
Newsletters and Journals and changing the front page to detail our
speakers.
The Jewels of
the Sea Kits at the Norwood Education Centre continue to be in demand by schools
and have not needed any replacements, but we did add six booklets from the
Marine Discovery Centre at the Star of the Sea School at Henley Beach to each of
the six main boxes. This was funded from the sale of spare JOTS and OG books
over the last few years.
I would like to thank
all the other Committee Members for their hard work this year and my wife
Margaret for so willingly giving up her time to come along to meetings and being
such a helpful and charming lady.
Secretary’s Annual
Report—Steve
Reynolds
Yet another
busy year has passed by very quickly again. We were educated and entertained by
several speakers at our monthly meetings through the year. Six of the guest
speakers were ladies. These were Caroline Wilson, Heidi Bartram, Dr Kirsten
Benkendorff, Kate Hutson, Cara Miller and Tiffany Inglis. Mike Hammer and
Scoresby Shepherd were the remaining two guest speakers. Caroline and Scoresby
both spoke at our AGM in May 2004. Society members gave presentations at three
of our meetings. These were Neville Skinner, Kevin Smith, Chris Hall and David
Muirhead (Chris and David showed us their slides on the same night). Many thanks
to these people for being speakers for us over the past year.
We celebrated
our Society’s 28th anniversary in June last year. Our newsletter was
28 years old last July. Our Journal was 25 years old last
October.
In November
last year we put on a joint display with the SDF and Reef Watch at the Great
Southern Dive Expo. My thanks again go to Kevin Smith who ensured that the
display was a success.
We managed our
quota of eleven newsletters and one journal for the year thanks to the efforts
of Philip Hall (our Editor) and Phill McPeake (our printer). Our newsletters now
feature more photographs than ever before. The 2004 Journal was quite large at
40 pages and this also featured many photographs. Although our two publications
are only printed in black and white, the photos are in shown in colour on our
web site. Monthly newsletters are now being emailed to members in PDF format
which includes colour photos. Many thanks to Jenny Clapson who continued her
financial support for our newsletter last year.
Our web site
was upgraded during the year thanks to our President, Philip Hall, and Danny
Gibbins, our Webmaster. Danny was awarded our Anniversary Trophy in June last
year for his efforts with the Calendar. Many thanks to both Philip and
Danny.
We continue to
be a member of both the SDF and the Conservation Council of SA. Chris Hall has
been our Conservation Council Rep (CCSA Councillor) for the past year. Many
thanks for representing us at the Conservation Council Chris. Many thanks to the
Conservation Council for allowing us to use their premises for our monthly
meetings.
We also
continue to support Reef Watch in various ways. Kevin Smith (our Reef Watch
Officer) is involved in many of their activities and David Muirhead participated
in a few. Some of us have participated in monitoring the Hallett Cove Reef as
part of Reef Watch’s Adopt A Reef Program. James Brook, Kevin Smith and myself
took part in dives on the reef in both November and February. Neville Skinner
was also at the November dive (with Steve Leske and Ginty Kubilius). Scoresby
Shepherd and Ginty were at the February dive along with Tim Cuthbertson and
members of NARCD. Kevin and I were also there in August trying to dive in low
visibility. We held our Christmas picnic after the November dive. Neville
Skinner (and Tim Cuthbertson and Ginty Kubilius) took part in the Marathon Dive
at Port Noarlunga in March.
We conducted
transect dives at Port Noarlunga Reef under the leadership of Kevin Smith in
October. Kevin and I did a preliminary reconnaissance dive there on the
16th October. That’s when I found a fine mask and snorkel there.
Kevin and I returned to the spot a week later to do some transect work around
the anchor and adjacent reef. Kevin was back there the next day with (I think)
Neville Skinner, Maggie Williams and Tim Woonton doing more transect work. All
this transect work is going towards the production of an underwater dive slate
about the Port Noarlunga Reef.
We held a
clean up dive at the Screwpile Jetty on Granite Island in March for Clean Up
Australia Day. Six divers conducted the underwater clean up beneath the jetty
whilst I attended to everything top side. The divers were Kevin Smith, Maggie
Williams, Tim Woonton, Neville Skinner, Tim Cuthbertson and Chris Hall. Many
thanks to them all. They all did a fine job. Special thanks to Kevin who took my
trailer (and myself) down to Victor Harbor, across the causeway to the jetty
(and back) and to the recycling depot on the other side of Victor before
returning home.
On the way
home we also called in on Peter Gilbert to drop off my faulty computer for Peter
to fix for me. Peter did a fine job and soon had me back on line again. Many
thanks for your help Peter.
Scoresby
Shepherd is a fine Patron for our Society and he assists us in many ways.
Scoresby became our second ever Patron on 1st January 2003. Our first
patron was the late John Glover, Curator of Fishes at the SA
Museum.
Much of our
time over the past twelve months has been spent producing and selling this
year’s SA Marine Life Calendar and producing next year’s calendar. The members
of the Calendar Production Team are to be congratulated on their excellent work.
In the space of just a few months we have gone from having no plans to do
another calendar to planning possibly two different calendars for 2007. This was
explained at our March General Meeting. It should be mentioned that, for the
first time, many different photographers took the photos used in our 2006
calendar.
Other regular
activities by the Society include our library, the Photo Index and the Jewels of
the Sea kits.
Last September
we commenced an arrangement of reciprocal honorary membership with the Friends
of Gulf St Vincent.
Society
members such as Philip and Margaret Hall, David Muirhead and Chris Hall
represented our Society by giving talks to groups during the year. Many thanks
for their efforts.
Many thanks to
all of our Committee and Officers for 2004-5.
All in all,
it’s been a very good year for the Society. I am looking forward to
participating along similar lines throughout the next
year.
Treasurer’s
Report—Phill
McPeake
This
will be presented at the Annual General meeting.
Committee Member’s
Report—Chris
Hall
This
past year has been a very quiet year for me both with diving and
photography.
I was
very pleased to have had the photo on the front cover of the 2005 calendar. I
think that this year’s calendar is going to be hard to beat and was very proud
to send it to friends throughout Australia and overseas and thank all those
involved in doing such a professional job. Keep up the good
work.
Although
I have not been as involved in the monitoring of Hallett Cove Reef as much as I
would like, I applaud MLSSA for getting involved and the work Kevin Smith has
done so far. It would be interesting to know how much the reef has deteriorated
since colonisation but I guess we’ll never know.
CCSA
this year has been disappointing especially the elections at the AGM. I believe
that they weren’t democratic and should be held again. Council meetings have
tended to be a shambles without much being done in relation to conservation
issues. I believe the Board needs to take a good look at what is happening and
get council meetings back on track so we’re not wasting our valuable time. I’m
not standing for council rep for MLSSA at our AGM but after 7 or 8 years in the
position I need a rest. I wish whoever takes on the role the best for the
future.
I’d like
to thank the committee for all its hard work and Margaret who ably assists our
President. Without Philip’s tireless work for MLSSA I think the organisation
would just about fold.
Also a
special thanks to Steve for procuring such good and informative speakers for our
general meetings.
I’ll be standing
for committee again and thank all members of MLSSA for their support and making
it such a worthwhile organisation.
Committee Member’s
Report—David
Muirhead
What
a year it’s been, seemingly one of the busiest ever for myself and MLSSA, and
although one wouldn’t know it from my almost nonexistent contributions to the
newsletters I have certainly done a lot of diving and underwater photography
particularly over the last summer and continuing on now into the autumn, and I
have got a lot of material some of which might rate for the calendar next year
or thereafter, but certainly plenty of it will rate for inclusion in our photo
index, if we can just get time to select them during viewing at society
meetings.
Much
of my recent burst of diving activity results from Jenni and I finally getting a
boat after all these years of promises and sponging off friends, and I must say
this has certainly been a fast learning curve, at the tender age of 50! Society
members have already heard of some of the classic boat ramp errors and similar
errors that I have managed to survive, and I optimistically feel that from here
on it is all up and up with regard to the future diving possibilities using the
boat, although most of this usage I expect will be confined to the
Normanville/Yankalilla Bay Area, which is where the boat now
lives.
But
spoilt though I am having this boat, its arrival has coincided with my discovery
that I can find lots of pipefish (which make wonderful photographic subjects,
and are also very interesting to observe, so much so that I feel I have moved on
from sea dragons to the next logical phase in diving pleasure, by the way!) just
by doing shallow shore dives off the beach at Yankalilla
Bay.
So
I now have a very pleasurable conflict of interest, the more costly but more
varied boat diving versus shore diving which is cheap and easy! Cleverly Jenni
and I have solved this problem by often doing one or two boat dives in the
morning and early afternoon, and if I have enough energy left (and air in my
tanks) then I might do an easy and relaxing dive off the beach at Normanville
later in the afternoon, as has happened a number of times on some of those
idyllic late summer and early autumn days recently.
Amongst
all the above has of course been the opportunity to do some boat diving at Rapid
Bay jetty so I’ve got some nice photographs from this wonderful site, which any
organisation trying to promote the conservation of this jetty is welcome to use,
specially if I ever get my scanner working!
All of the above has
been a “ME” thing in true Muirhead tradition, as they say some things never
change. But Marine Life Society interests and activities certainly have
continued to change and evolve over the last year, as I’m sure our President’s
report will clearly show, and as far as I can see most of this has been for the
better, including continuing our campaign for more members and better publicity,
and the ever increasing demands for our images to be used in promoting
conservation of South Australia’s wonderful marine life.
Again
I have been very impressed by the quality of speakers at our meetings, indeed
the fact that many of these have been very high profile experts in their own
areas both within government and non-government arenas affirms the fact that we
are a well known and well respected group within the Marine conservation
community.
Meanwhile
all around us I see ever increasing opportunities to attend wonderful seminars,
workshops on creature and plant identification, and so forth, and the few that I
manage to attend are always very enjoyable and
educational.
So
much so that I have to keep asking myself even more than ever, “Why would anyone
bother going out of South Australia for their diving experiences?”- that’s it
folks, and here’s looking forward to another great year.
Library Officer’s Annual
Report—Steve
Reynolds
Hard copies of all of
our newsletters and journals are kept on file in our library which also
comprises books, reports, files, videos, CDs and DVDs. We continually add
incoming reports and information into the library which also receives lots of
items such as reports and dive club newsletters from the
SDF.
Photo Index Officers Annual
Report—Steve
Reynolds
My thanks go to
everyone who assisted with the Photo Index in the past year, especially Philip
Hall, Phill McPeake, David Muirhead, Chris Hall and Danny Gibbins. At the time
of writing we are still looking at purchasing several reference books for the
identification and classification of species. This will involve a good deal of
expense for us but we are trying to buy books at good prices. Good quality books
will make the job of Photo Index Officer easier.
SDF
Rep’s Annual Report—Steve
Reynolds
Neville Skinner and
myself represented our Society at most SDF meetings over the past twelve months.
I have still been the Secretary of the SDF for the past year. This enables me to
pass much information from the SDF on to our members. This includes the monthly
news sheets, minutes and agendas that I prepare for the SDF. The SDF’s AGM will
be held in July. The SDF participated in a joint display with MLSSA and Reef
Watch at last November’s Great Southern Dive Expo. Much of the SDF’s time over
the past year has been spent on issues such as the repair of the Rapid Bay
jetty, arrangements for recreational divers on the Hobart and an insurance
proposal for dive clubs. The SDF
wants more scuba divers to join recreational dive clubs (and more clubs to join
the SDF). Providing an umbrella insurance cover for clubs is just one of the
ways that the SDF is trying to achieve this. The SDF news sheet is now only sent
to members of clubs which are financial members of the SDF. The SDF has also arranged for copies of
Dive Log to be available to members of SDF member clubs. I will bring a few
copies of the Dive Log along to our monthly meetings for passing on to our
financial members. MLSSA members who have read recent issues of the SDF news
sheet would realize that the SDF now has a new web site.
by David
Muirhead
Wow! and Blimey! and
My Goodness! and whatever other superlatives come into mind!, I have finally got
to dive in the shark enclosure off Granite Island, Encounter Bay, and it really
was fantastic.
For
some time Ben Brayford and I had been trying to get a dive together there using
his recent connections as an employee of this tourist facility to make things
easy for me! then phoned me last Saturday morning saying the weather would be
great on Sunday and could we dive together then, and everything went smoothly
from that point. I won't bore you with the details of the preparations, except
that looking down into the tank on this wonderful calm glassy warm day at the
masses of fish and sharks and rays of all shapes and sizes and especially the 7
foot long bronze whaler cruising up and down looked all very tantalising, albeit
a little anxiety provoking. Especially given that our very capable and helpful
guide Joe, who is in charge of the day-to-day operations of this facility, told
us just before we got in the water that the sharks might be a little bit hungry
because it was getting close to their feeding time!
Juvenile
Bronze Whaler
Although
the water was very clear for this particular site, and despite the enclosure
being one that floats on pontoons (although 4 m deep itself it remains well
clear of the substrate underneath the cage) we did find that once we were in the
cage with fish the visibility dropped a little bit due to some increased fish
activity and some silt amongst the kelp growing on the bottom and sides, but
still remained adequate for photographic purposes and in the limited time we had
I blazed away with two cameras at everything that moved. Once one was in the
water and could see all the fish and sharks of course one soon realised that
there was no real danger as long as one behaved sensibly, in fact I think I
probably paid too much attention to the 7 foot Bronzie and not enough attention
to the much smaller seven gilled shark, because I read in a book the next day
that this type of shark does in fact have a bit of a track record of attacking
divers in aquariums. However this particular seven gilled shark mainly swam
around the edges all the time we were in the enclosure, but did look very ugly
and mean, not unlike anyone that can take a better underwater photograph than
me!
Adult Bronze
Whaler
Because
I haven’t even looked at my photographs yet this will have to be a very short
article, written under duress because we are desperate for articles for the
newsletter, sorry folks only kidding, I was so excited by this experience that I
will be very happy to write a follow-up article hopefully for the next
newsletter, and everyone in the club knows that my promises about deadlines for
articles hold true?!
PS
and then there was quite a nice dive under The Screwpile Jetty to follow it,
which I hopefully will also mention in my next
article!
More on the
Moorara
by Scoresby
Shepherd
I was the organiser of
the research expedition on board the ketch Moorara, skippered by George Heritage
in December 1962 which cruised along the north coast of KI and on to Wedge
Island, diving at many sites and collecting for the SA Museum.
There were some
notable finds of new species such as Capnella shepherdi found at Wedge
Island. We dived on the wrecks of the Portland Maru, and also on the Clan
Ranald, which in those days was still semi-intact, although with a gaping hole
in the bow. The wreck has since sunk to low rubble.
The most notable
diving was in the shallow caves on the SW side of Wedge Island, which penetrated
some 10m or more under the cliffs. The walls were covered with some deepwater
sponges rarely seen in shallow water.