‘Out on a swim’ is a coral reef blog that tells the stories of the characters who live under the waves and what has caught my eye when ‘out on a swim’ in the lagoons of Norfolk Island. It is also a record of the difficulties Norfolk Island’s reef faces, like many others around the world, as a result of the poor water quality that has been allowed to flow onto it.
This page shows the most recent blog posts. For the complete catalogue, visit the ‘Out on a swim index’ page.
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Spring dawn at Emily Bay, Norfolk Island, September 2026
El Niño is strengthening across the Pacific, but that does not tell us exactly what the coming months will bring to Norfolk Island. After a long wet spell, I am watching our rainfall and water supplies more closely again – and, underwater, keeping an eye on sea temperature, algae, coral recruits and the fish that turn up on the reef.
Read MoreA snapshot of just a few of the corals found on Norfolk Island
Two major new coral reef reports carry a clear message for Norfolk Island: reefs can recover when pressures ease, but the time available for recovery is shrinking. Norfolk Islanders were raising concerns about water quality, runoff and the health of Emily and Slaughter Bays nearly forty years ago. Today we have much better science, a changing climate and a far clearer understanding of how closely the catchment and reef are connected. This article looks at what that means for water quality, long-term monitoring, dredging and how we manage Kingston from land to sea.
Read MoreSabre squirrelfish, Sargocentron spiniferum, seen at Norfolk Island, increasing its known range southwards by 750 km
A fish once thought to belong only to Norfolk turns up elsewhere; another appears here hundreds of kilometres beyond its known range. Cardinalfishes and a Sabre squirrelfish show how our maps of species distributions are revised.
Read MoreA young Chromis norfolkensis, Norfolk chromis
A Norfolk chromis that turned out not to be Chromis fumea, a blenny found nowhere else, and a tiny goby that may not yet have a name. A look at what we mean by native, endemic, undescribed and newly described – and why scientific names sometimes change.
Read MoreElysia marginata, Norfolk Island
A proliferation of Bryopsis on the reef has brought some beautiful little underwater grazers with it. I follow the trail from sap-sucking sea slugs and egg masses to a bigger question – why is there so much Bryopsis around at the moment?
Read MoreLaciolina chloroleuca, collected in the 1990s, Norfolk Island
I’ve seen the beautiful shells of Laciolina chloroleuca in Emily Bay for decades, but I’d never really stopped to wonder where the living animals were. It turns out they may be buried half a metre beneath the sand. A closer look at an easily overlooked clam, its extraordinary shell markings, and the hidden life beneath our lagoon.
Read MoreWhat I thought would be a steady plod towards retirement, with plenty of time spent nursing grandchildren, was abruptly upended exactly six years ago today. This is the story of how an environmental catastrophe changed the course of my life – and led me to reinvent myself. It is a reflection on how, and why, I became an accidental marine scientist.
Read MoreWhere the land meets the sea, Emily Bay, Norfolk Island
Norfolk Island’s draft Waterway and Wetland Strategy will guide work for the next ten years. I support its intent, but it needs to be clear, practical and measurable – joining the dots from ridge to reef so we know whether public money is improving water quality and helping the reef.
Read MoreThis coral in the Kingston lagoon is overgrown with algae after succumbing to white syndrome* (12 October 2024)
Let the pictures do the talking. This is the reality on Norfolk Island’s reef today, laid out in a two-minute video.
Read MoreThe methane-busting algae, Asparagopsis taxiformis, Norfolk Island
A small red seaweed on Norfolk’s reef has become part of a much bigger story. Asparagopsis taxiformis can look like a delicate red feather duster or, at another stage of its life cycle, like a tiny cottony pom-pom. It is beautiful, easily overlooked, and now being used in the cattle industry to help reduce methane emissions. This post looks at the reef oddity behind the low-methane beef story – and why repeated local observation can be more useful than it first appears.
Read MoreAn aatuti guarding his eggs, Norfolk Island
Aatuti are bold little algae farmers, but how does one of their farms begin? Over the past year, I have been following several coral patches as small white scars became algal footholds, then larger defended patches. I still cannot say what caused the first wounds, but the photo sequences show something fascinating: on a reef where algae is already gaining ground, even tiny changes on the coral surface can become part of a much bigger story.
Read MoreView across the cricket pitch to Old Military Barracks, Kingston, Norfolk Island
A recent Australian Government media release presents investment, monitoring and catchment works as progress on Norfolk Island’s water quality. Some of that work is useful, and some of it was badly needed. But activity is not the same as proven improvement. This post looks at Kingston sewerage, wetlands, cattle, acid sulfate soils, groundwater and reef health, and asks whether Emily Bay and Slaughter Bay are actually being better protected.
Read MoreBluespine unicornfish, Naso unicornis. Note the two scalpels at the base of its tail. These fish have been found to live to at least 50 years old. Norfolk Island
Surgeonfish are named for the sharp little scalpels near their tails, but on Norfolk’s reef their more useful work happens at the other end. Pencil surgeonfish, bluespine unicornfish and their relatives help browse algae across the reef – a small daily job that becomes very valuable on an algae-rich lagoon reef like ours.
Read MoreWhile setting my research cams last week, I swam into what looked like an underwater snowstorm. It appeared to be the aftermath of a mass moulting event, with large numbers of tiny, translucent shrimp-like exoskeletons drifting together near the surface.
Read MoreCorals in western Slaughter Bay, close to the Kingston Pier Dredging Project
This correspondence with DCCEEW is about more than one dredging proposal. It is about what happens when an ecologically distinctive place is assessed through standard tools that do not always make its most important values easy to see. I am publishing it here because that is something we need to be aware of, both on Norfolk Island and more broadly in Australia.
Read MoreCorals in western Slaughter Bay, close to the Kingston Pier Dredging Project
Kingston dredging is edging closer, and the paper trail is growing. This post brings together earlier correspondence with the Department and the latest media release so readers can see what has been asked, what has been answered, and what still remains unclear about the project, its rationale, and the protections proposed for the reef.
Read MoreThe colony in 2025, showing the vivid green colour when healthy (and the surface texture I’m hoping will eventually support a confident ID)
Green Mountain – the name I give this coral in my database – is a coral I’ve photographed for years as I swim past. Then I found its backstory in the Norfolk Island National Parks archives: a rough map, reused paper, a note in the margin – ‘still thriving’. That’s how baselines begin.
Read MoreSlaughter Bay, Norfolk Island
The Kingston dredging proposal on Norfolk Island raises a bigger question than dredging alone: how well do standard environmental assessment tools capture the real significance of a remote and unusual reef system like Norfolk Island’s?
Read MoreHammer corals, Norfolk Island
Hammer corals have unique tentacles that are large, fleshy, and tubular; these terminate in a ‘T’-shaped, hammer-head or anchor. Beneath all these softly waving tentacles is an extraordinary skeleton structure, which helps define them as a large polyp stony coral.
Read MoreJames Stuart’s three-striped butterflyfish, Chaetodon tricinctus. Image courtesy of the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales; PXD 134
Norfolk Island’s fish fauna reflects both connection and isolation. Some species may arrive from elsewhere as drifting larvae, some populations appear to persist locally, and some fishes known from islands on either side of Norfolk have still not been recorded here. This post looks at what old survey work, regional checklists and genetic studies suggest about that more complicated picture.
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