Atlas of Living Australia recognises iNaturalist observations for Norfolk Island

Out on A Swim

‘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.

This blog is rated in the Top 20 Coral Reef Blogs in the world.

It may seem unimportant, irrelevant, or downright nit picky, but back in March 2022 I contacted the Atlas of Living Australia because I’d noticed an anomaly in their dataset feeds from iNaturalist.org. Let me explain.

As you may be aware if you read my Facebook page, I upload my observations to that platform in order to help me identify species and so we have a record of what is living here on Norfolk Island. iNaturalist is a global platform. Similar to iNaturalist, you can also upload your observations to the Atlas of Living Australia, which is the preeminent Australian platform. Now I don't know about you, but I don’t have the time or resources to be sitting here duplicating my uploads. However, very conveniently, ALA has a handy form that you can tick, which allows you to opt in and have your iNaturalist observations migrated across to the ALA, just like that. Easy peasy.

Except for here on Norfolk Island there seemed to be a roadblock, and our observations weren’t recognised as being from Australia.

Now putting politics aside about the status of Norfolk Island, why is it important that our observations are included in the ALA?

Because. Science + research. That’s all. As it says on the ALA website:

“Citizen science is becoming an increasingly significant and important contributor to the pool of data being used to create a more accurate picture of our biodiversity and ultimately advance scientific knowledge.”

...

“BioCollect fills a significant gap in data collection tools, supporting scientists wanting to engage the public in their research and the public wanting to participate in important scientific work, including collecting their own observation data.”

Which comes back to a question I often ask: how can you protect something when you don't know what it is? Well, you can't.

Which is why I fired off emails at semi-regular intervals to anyone I thought would listen.

Anyway, today, 16 August 2023, thanks to the wonderful people at the Australian Museum and at the ALA, citizen science data from the external territories of Australia, including Ashmore and Cartier Islands; Christmas Island; Cocos Keeling Island; Coral Sea Islands; Heard and McDonald Islands; and Norfolk Island have finally been included for anyone who opted in for this to happen. Needless to say, I am over the moon.

The photo above is of the Norfolk Island blenny, Parablennius serratolineatus, which, incidentally, is only found in a 20 km radius of Norfolk Island, so it’s a pretty special little guy. Moreover, I used to see these down at the pier end of Slaughter Bay all the time, but haven’t spotted any since February this year (2023), despite looking out for them any time I’m snorkelling at that end.

July 24, 2026

From ridge to reef: unpicking the Waterway and Wetland Strategy

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.

June 28, 2026

The red seaweed behind low-methane beef

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.

June 20, 2026

From coral scar to aatuti farm

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.

June 15, 2026

Norfolk’s water quality – when action is reported as outcome

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.

June 14, 2026

How surgeonfishes got their name

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.

May 28, 2026

A shrimp storm

While 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.

Kingston dredging: what happens when a reef does not fit the framework

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.

May 24, 2026

Kingston dredging: the project advances, the questions remain

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.

May 17, 2026

The lime-green coral in Slaughter Bay – a 40-year paper trail

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.