Dear {{recipient.first_name_or_friend}}
We love collaboration. As a volunteer organisation we simply cannot do what we do without a myriad of collaborators. From community members, families and friends, to businesses far and wide. So we want to share a few of our favourite local products. We hope you love them as much as we do!
Your Mates Brewery: These guys have been Reef Check Australia supporters for a couple of years now, assisting with beach and in-water cleanups, and helping quench the thirst of many a volunteer. They have a huge range of tasty beverages and merch, so make sure to check them out! https://yourmatesbrewing.com/
Pranafest: Reef Check Australia has been the charity of choice for Pranafest over the past two years, with next year already in the works. Check out their 'taste of prana' event coming up on November 19th, or secure your ticket to next years event from June 2nd. Think health, wellness, connection and fun! A Taste of Prana
Waterlust: A selection of ocean inspired attire made from recycled plastic bottles, we love their fishy designs. Bonus; use this link to support us as well! https://waterlust.com/
Saltwater Eco Tours: Jump on a 100-year-old sail boat through the waterways of Mooloolaba for a cultural tour and you will never see the area the same again. Bookings are essential as they book out fast. https://www.saltwaterecotours.com.au/
Ocean Art Naomi: Back again with gorgeous Christmas cards with all proceeds going to Reef Check Australia, we love all of the gorgeous pieces Naomi puts together. So grab some xmas cards and check out her work here: https://oceanartnaomi.com.au
This months email includes:
- Action of the Month: Reflect, learn and celebrate
- News from the Field
- Brain Food
- Current Coral Affairs
- Get With the Program
Reflect, learn and celebrate!
I recently read an article that explained why time seems to speed up as you get older. Basically, as children, our brains can process information quicker. Basically, we experience our lives like time-lapse photography. The more photos that are captured per second, the slower the movement of time appears. Yet as we age, we start to increase the interval between each photograph due to ever more complex neural pathways and pathway degradation, giving the illusion that events are occurring faster.
This got me thinking. What if we purposely slowed down for a moment?
Life seems to have sped up for so many this year; everyone is hyper focussed on just getting stuff done. For so many, it’s been a really hard slog. There is burn out everywhere. So what if we suggest that instead of speeding up in time for the silly season that we take the time to sit down. To reflect on the year that has been so far. What did you really excel at this year? What could you have been better at? And how do you want the year to end? Most importantly.. how are you going to make it happen?
Taking the time to reflect is vital. We often move so quickly towards a goal that we forget to look back and see how far we have come. So this months action of the month is to reflect on the year. Think about what you learnt, and celebrate the wins, and the challenges. It will allow you to re-centre, to slow down time, even just a little bit and get ready for the month ahead.
News from the field
Stories and updates from our teams out & about. Check out some of these regional stories on our website!
South East Queensland
Palm Beach Reef Health Survey
An early start had the team heading to Palm Beach in reasonable conditions. Palm Beach Reef is an extensive rocky reef made up of numerous ridges and gullies, located 800-1000m off shore. The reef has patchy hard coral cover, and hosts a high number of benthic invertebrates such as sponges, ascidians and anemones. It also has a notably high abundance of sea urchins, wobbegongs and octopuses.
Reef Check Australia has been monitoring Southeast Queensland reefs since 2007, and Palm Beach Reef since 2007 to gain a better understanding of the subtropical reefs in the Gold Coast subregion.
Although surface conditions were a little lumpy on the way, conditions improved once on site and the team enjoyed two pleasant reef health surveys.
The site was host to numerous anemones (508 in total between the 2 sites) along with a large number of urchins (Diadema; a long spined sea urchin, collector urchins and pencil urchins; all target species for Reef Check Australia). Although not counted on our surveys, the site also hosted a large variety of sea slugs to the delight of our surveyors who are obsessed with these little critters.
Reef Check Acknowledge and pay respects to the people of the Yugambeh language region of the Gold Coast and all their descendants both past and present. We also acknowledge the many Aboriginal people from other regions as well as Torres Strait and South Sea Islander people who now live in the local area and have made an important contribution to the community.
This survey was made possible by grant funding from the City of Gold Coast Catchment and Citizen Science Grant
Wavebreak Island Reef Health Survey
The small but mighty team started their day nice and early with a 5.00am meet up in order to catch the high tide at Wavebreak Island.
Reef Check Australia has been monitoring Southeast Queensland reefs since 2007, and Wavebreak Island Reef since 2019, as part of a partnership with City of Gold Coast to monitor the health of reefs in the area.
Wave Break Island is located within the Gold Coast Broadwater (inshore) and is therefore protected from ocean swells. It provides an ideal environment for introductory diving and snorkeling. It's a perfect dive spot for beginners or for someone seeking calmer conditions. The rocky scree environment allows diver's to navigate in both shallow and deep depths, however divers should take care diving here on anything other than a slack tide, as the water can move quickly around the rock wall. The rock formation to the north of the island is an ideal area to explore as it's home to numerous sponges, small corals and plenty of octopuses. A huge number of fish are found here, resulting in this site being heavily utilised by fishermen, divers and snorkelers alike.
Beautiful conditions greeted the team, and their timing was spot on, allowing the team to complete the survey with minimal current and with the site to themselves; a very uncommon occurrence due to the popularity of this site for boating and fishing.
Lots of silver bream and flathead were sighted during the survey. As the site is characterised by rocky rubble on a sandy bottom, there was no coral recorded on transect. A small amount of debris and a couple of target fish were also recorded.
Reef Check Acknowledge and pay respects to the people of the Yugambeh language region of the Gold Coast and all their descendants both past and present. We also acknowledge the many Aboriginal people from other regions as well as Torres Strait and South Sea Islander people who now live in the local area and have made an important contribution to the community.
This survey was made possible by grant funding from the City of Gold Coast Catchment and Citizen Science Grant
Cotton Tree Clean Up
The winds have been back, in between bouts of rain, so the Reef Check Australia team jumped at the opportunity of a sunny day to do a clean up along Maroochydore to Cotton Tree to see what the impact of the high south easterlies and large waves have had on the amount of marine debris collected in the area. This forms part of a wider program to look at the ongoing impacts of the floods earlier in the year.
There are several newly placed geotextile sandbag groins placed in the corner of Cotton Tree, acting as a large accumulation point, where we found a myriad of single use items from silicon tips, soft plastic wrappers, and pieces of blue rope.
A total of 10kg, two bags, and 1129 pieces of debris was removed from just over an 850m stretch of beach. Hard plastic pieces came in first place for numbers with 305 pieces, and cigarette butts taking out the second place with 161 found. This is the HIGHEST number of cigarette butts found on any of our beach clean ups in a really long time.
Polystyrene (157 pieces) is still being found in high numbers; suspected to be an ongoing impact from the February floods.
Remember, every little bit counts. If you see rubbish on the beach; pick it up. Together, we can and will make an ocean of difference.
Reef Check acknowledge the Kabi Kabi people of the Sunshine Coast, Traditional Custodians of the land and sea country on which these activities took place and we pay our respects to their elders past, present and emerging.
This project has received funding support from the Queensland Government’s Community Sustainability Action grant program.
Want to join in the next event, or maybe get your co-workers to join in for the next clean up? Get in touch. We have plenty of events still in the works, and plenty of ways to get involved. Keep an eye on our Enews letter and follow us on socials for regular updates and event locations!
Great Barrier Reef
Horseshoe Bay Clean Up
Earlier this month a small team got together for a beach cleanup at Horseshoe Bay Magnetic Island on a lovely sunny Sunday! We found much less rubbish on the beach compared to last year though this may be due to a few environmental factors and some passionate local Maggie residents who regularly clean up this beach! We also conducted an Ausmap microplastics survey and were happy to find no microplastics (<5mm). All data will be uploaded to Tangaroa blue's Australian Marine Debris Initiative. It was a lovely day out with like-minded individuals and a great reminder of why we love and how we care for our local beaches and marine environments.
This project has received funding support from the Queensland Government’s Community Sustainability Action grant program.
Kings Beach, Bowen Clean Up
Earlier this month a dedicated team of citizens from Townsville, Guthalungra, Bowen and Airlie got together at Kings Beach in Bowen for a macro and macro debris cleanup. Our team of 8 collected 12.5kg of trash including 74 lids, 577 pieces of plastic remnants, some fishing equipment, boat parts and some microplastics across 800mtrs of beach! Once again hatched turtle eggs were found on this beach which ultimately is why we think it's important to cleanup our beaches.
All data will be uploaded to Tangaroa blue's Australian Marine Debris Initiative and microplastics (more than 5mm in size) sent to Ausmap. Thanks to the Reef Check Australia team who volunteered their time and of course our 4 legged mascot for the day.
This project has received funding support from the Queensland Government’s Community Sustainability Action grant program.
Want to join in the next event? Keep an eye on our Enews letter and follow us on socials for regular updates and event locations!
Black Island Surveys
In October Reef Check Surveyors visited Black Island in the Whitsundays, one of our new monitoring sites in the Whitsundays to be surveyed annually over the new few years. This site is a popular due to its proximity to the mainland and lovely shallow blue waters. It is also one of the Boats4Corals sites, a project helping to scale up larval re-seeding in the Whitsundays region. This year we recorded similar levels of substrate (there are high levels of bare rock at this site which provide space for settlement of the next generational of young coral) and almost double the amount of fish as last year (mostly snapper, butterflyfish and parrotfish).
Huge thankyou to Charlotte from Oceanrafting for joining us on her days off and John from Whitsundays Paradise Explorer for transporting and keeping our team safe on his vessel.
This project was made possible by support from the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.
Reef Check Acknowledge the Ngaro people of the Whitsundays as the Traditional Owners of the land and sea country where these activities took place. We pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
Want to join in on the fun? Keep an eye on our Enewsletter and follow us on socials for regular updates on what’s happening above and below the water!
Hook Island underwater and land-based clean up
The Reef Check Australia team headed out to Hook Island off the Whitsundays to conduct our annual underwater and beach clean up as part of Tangaroa blue's ReefClean project. At this site we have previously found small amounts of debris, however this time we were pleasantly surprised to find a total of just 13 items of debris amongst the rocks and rubbles along the beach.
The dive team also took to the water to conduct an underwater clean up, finding only a minimal amount of debris during their dive.
A massive shout out to Whitsunday Paradise Explorer for taking us out to this location, and our dedicated team of old and new volunteers for all your efforts!
Reef Check Australia Acknowledge the Ngaro people of the Whitsundays as the Traditional Owners of the land and sea country where these activities took place and we pay our respects to their elders past, present and emerging.
This project is supported by Tangaroa blue through ReefClean; a project funded by the Australian Government’s Reef Trust. ReefClean is a project to remove and reduce marine debris impacting the Great Barrier Reef.
Brain Food
Reviews and details on books, documentaries, and podcasts that we have come across, & wanted to share.
Wildlings Forest School with Jodi Salmond
Check out this podcast with our very own Jodi Salmond as she talks about Citizen Science and Sustainable Stewardship.
Brisbane Coral ID Workshop 28 & 29 November with Russell Kelley
Okay so it's not a book or a podcast but this is a rare opportunity to attend a coral ID workshop in Brisbane with Russell Kelley, author of the Coral Finder 2022.
check out this link for more details
Current Coral Affairs
Check out some of the latest news and research about our ocean
Scientists from James Cook University are using aerial images to monitor the health of Dugong Populations.
Get with the Program
Here's what we've got coming up in the next few weeks, keep checking the website for more updates.
Tuesday 8 November | Coast to Coral - register via our website
Sunday 20 November | Raffles at Your Mates Brewery - come along and enjoy a tasty beverage and support our raffles, great prizes to be won.
Saturday 10 December | SUP and Beach Clean Up - email [email protected] for more details
If you missed any of our Coast to Coral online events, remember you can always catch-up by taking a look at our YouTube Channel here 
Thanks for reading! If you want to help our work to empower more people to protect Australian reefs, please consider making a monthly tax-deductible donation.
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