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 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.

Jun 13, 2025

Glimpses of recovery: what the reef could be if we let it

Day 6 of this photo series from Norfolk Island coincides with the final day of the UN Ocean Conference in Nice. After a week of documenting decline, today’s post offers a different view – what reef recovery can look like when conditions improve. Drought in 2024 gave the reef a break, and the results were unmistakable: healthier corals, lower disease, and more fish. This is what’s possible if we act.

Jun 12, 2025

Warning signs: quiet and unnoticed collapse of two coral colonies

Day 5 of my blog series for the UN Ocean Conference: two long-lived coral colonies in Norfolk’s lagoon died quietly from disease. No drama – just slow collapse and overgrowth by algae. A reminder that not all reef losses are loud, but they are happening.

Jun 11, 2025

Warning signs: what Norfolk Island’s reef is telling us

Day 4 of a week-long photo series from Norfolk Island, shared during the UN Ocean Conference in Nice. Today’s post spotlights a Hydnophora pilosa colony where white syndrome appeared suddenly and spread quickly, taking out around a quarter of the coral. In the months that followed, algae quietly filled the gap – a subtle but telling shift from coral to algae that’s happening across the reef.

Jun 10, 2025

Warning signs: coral disease takes hold

In Day 3 of this blog post series, published while leaders gather at the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, we see Norfolk Island’s coral reef lagoon quietly delivering a stark warning: recurrent land-based pollution, coral disease, and delayed decisions are dismantling this ecosystem in real time.

Jun 9, 2025

Warning signs: coral growth anomalies – the slow cancers of the reef

Day 2’s post coinciding with the UN Ocean Conference looks at coral growth anomalies – sometimes called coral ‘cancers’. These slow-moving diseases quietly weaken coral colonies, making them far more vulnerable to storm damage and algal takeover. On Norfolk Island’s reef, I’ve watched this exact process play out over several years. This is how chronic stress silently dismantles coral ecosystems.

Jun 8, 2025

Warning signs: shifting baselines on Norfolk Island’s reef

Today is World Ocean Day — a timely moment to launch my week-long blog series on Norfolk Island’s reef. Each day this week, I’ll be sharing photo essays that document the slow but steady pressures reshaping this fragile reef. Today: how shifting baselines make us blind to what we’ve already lost.

Apr 29, 2025

The Governance–Government Vacuum: Norfolk Island’s Forgotten Ecology

A personal reflection on Norfolk Island’s coral reef environment, political denial, and what John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes can still teach us about slow-moving disasters — and why this election matters more than ever.

Feb 20, 2025

Cute as buttons – Astrea curta

Astrea curta corals are ‘small, moderately plocoid [flattened], distinct, and almost circular’ . Normally grey-green in colour, you can see from the images here, ours are often beautiful rich gold, although they do vary. They have a neat growth habit and button-like corallites, which can grow in columns, spherically or flattened. Large colonies of these can form gorgeous undulating bumps.

Jan 26, 2025

From 'Watch' to 'Warning'

Last week, the chance of coral bleaching in Norfolk Island’s inshore lagoons was raised from ‘Watch’ to ‘Warning’ and will more than likely rise to Alert levels one and two in coming weeks. So why do I worry about water quality all the time when bleaching seems inevitable these days and so the reef is probably doomed anyway? Read on to find out.

Jan 4, 2025

From little things – watching them grow

Small numbers of different fish species is not an unusual phenomenon on Norfolk Island’s reef, but it does demonstrate what a tiny, precious, coral reef ecosystem we have, when we can count individuals on one hand and watch each of them grow, like these little blackeye thicklips, a member of the wrasse family.