"The Sea Dragon's World: a voyage through South Australia's unique marine life"

Reef Watch will be giving two exciting presentations at this year's Leafy Seadragon Festival:

• Saturday 13th April, 6 pm
• Sunday 14th April, 11 am

Southern Australia is home to some of the most biodiverse and endemic temperate marine life in the world, including the leafy sea dragon. Watch and learn as we take a journey through some of the beautiful, weird and wonderful marine life that lives in the leafy sea dragon's world. Specimens, images and a marine biologist will contribute to an enlightening experience.

Both presentations will be at the Normanville Natural Resource Centre, 3/50 Main St, Normanville.

Hope to see you there!

Photo: Leafy seadragon with eggs, by Paul Macdonald.

New Feral or in Peril program resources

A new website based field atlas with reporting function has been developed for the Reef Watch Feral or in Feral program as part of the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) Biological Data Recording System. A 35 page Feral or in Peril booklet has also been produced with support from a State NRM Community Grant.

The new website includes a photo upload facility and interactive map to pinpoint the location of sightings with an automatic latitude/longitude entry system. In addition, when one of our ‘red alert' or ‘conservation concern' species is reported, the system can generate an automatic email alert to a range of key stakeholders. This system enables a real time report of a potentially serious threat to the marine environment. Another benefit is being able to map all sightings of our Feral or In Peril species sightings without GIS facilities.
These new resources will contribute to improved reporting to relevant coastal management agencies, which in turn will lead to improved management and health of coastal environments.
The website is expected to be fully functional by May

Alien species discovered by Reef Watch Intertidal volunteers at Aldinga

Neville Hudson, Reef Watch Intertidal Project Officer and a group from the Conservation Volunteers Australia Summer Program, were undertaking a routine intertidal reef survey on Monday 13th February when a live European shore crab (or green crab as it is also known) was found on the reef 80 metres from the waters edge. On Saturday 25th February the group found a second, smaller, European shore crab in the same vicinity.
Although these are exciting finds for the group this discovery set off alarm bells at BiosecuritySA and SARDI Aquatic Sciences. Dr Marty Deveney of SARDI Marine Pest research said that this was both a disturbing and exciting find as this crab has not been found in large numbers along this part of the coast for over 10 years.
"These crabs could have been the last ones" Marty said. "Or it may be a sign of a population increase". SARDI is looking for a live specimen to test its new DNA technology and is now actively working with Reef Watch to collect and preserve specimens of this species for this purpose.