View across the cricket pitch to Old Military Barracks, Kingston, Norfolk Island

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

June 15, 2026

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.

Corals in western Slaughter Bay, close to the Kingston Pier Dredging Project

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

May 28, 2026

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.

Quality Row, Kingston, Norfolk Island, January 2025. The year began deep in drought.

A year in review – 2025 on Norfolk Island's reef

December 28, 2025

Norfolk Island’s reef in 2025 – a year in review. From NOAA bleaching alerts and the UN Ocean Conference ‘Warning Signs’ series to post-drought coral recovery and a wet winter revealed in long-term rainfall records, this post captures the wins, losses, and shifting baselines beneath the lagoon. Includes reef photos, highlights from Reef Relief, and standout stories from 2025 – from coral health and disease to boxfish biomimicry, sea urchins, nudibranchs, and heat-stress signals in anemones.

My school’s logo and motto, Christ me spede

Honoured to be featured

September 30, 2025

I left school in the UK nearly 50 years ago, so it was a pleasant surprise to be invited to share some images and take part in an interview for an article about my work, to be published in the annual glossy magazine the school now produces. Here is the end product.

Nepean Island (left) and Phillip Island (right) to the south of Norfolk Island are free of rats. Rat-free seabird rookeries are important for the health of coral reefs.

Poop power

June 17, 2025

Not all poop on a reef is bad poop. In fact some kinds of poop can be a reef’s most important invisible engine. Fish poop, bird poop – even poop that gets eaten again by other fish – all of it keeps the ecosystem ticking over in a way that’s nothing short of extraordinary.

The view across Emily Bay and Slaughter Bay’s contiguous reef at low tide. Quintal’s Passage can be seen as two parrallel lines of rocks. It runs from Emily out to sea.

Blasting a passage through the reef, Norfolk Island

April 6, 2024

We have shaped Kingston, Norfolk Island, to suit our own ends, whether it is by draining the swamp, undertaking major earthworks, or by using it for agriculture and grazing. Our interventions have placed the reef at risk. But simultaneously, the confluence of human activity and a unique natural environment have created a place of incredible significance, which deserves some special management to preserve all its facets.

Norfolk Island’s inshore reef during low tide and at sunrise

A year in review – 2023 on Norfolk Island's reef

December 29, 2023

Sadly, the year didn’t bring any obvious improvements to Norfolk Island's reef in terms of reductions in incidences of coral disease, or runaway algal growth. And while some fish seem to have departed the scene, another species has re-established its home. Here’s a rundown of what I've been doing during the last four years of observations, and what I've seen happening on our reef in 2023.

Crustose coralline algae, Norfolk Island

Pretty in pink – the real coral reef builders

April 8, 2023

Animal, vegetable or mineral? What are crustose coralline algae? Are they important? What role do they play on our coral reefs?

There’s a lot to learn about coralline algae. For a humble lifeform, they really pack a punch.

Emily Bay, Norfolk Island, #thecoloursarereal!

Beneath the waves in Emily Bay, Norfolk Island

March 20, 2023

Looking across Emily Bay, do you wonder what is beneath the waves in there? Although this is not strictly part of Norfolk Island’s reef, it is part of one continuous ecosystem; therefore, in today’s March focus on Norfolk Island’s reef I thought it was worth showing you what you can see at your feet as you wade into the shallows.

Tiny shells collected from the beach, Norfolk Island 1990s

You don’t always know what you’ve got – ’til it’s gone

March 8, 2023

On Norfolk Island, Australian Marine Parks recently issued a no-take area in our coral reef lagoon habitats. My hope is that with these bans in place, in addition to curbing runaway algal growth, there will be an improvement across the reef ecosystem in a number of different species, with subsequent knock effects for others, including for our molluscs, wrasse and octopus species.

Be like Senator David Pocock - wear a rashie

Sunbeams and sunscreens

December 19, 2022

Did you know that sunscreen is highly toxic?

From 1 January 2021, Hawaii banned all sunscreens containing the reef-harming chemicals oxybenzone and octinoxate, and with good reason. This radical action was taken because unsafe sunscreens can, and have, caused ecological ruination to coral reefs.

A flatworm, *Pseudobiceros sp*, dining on the tunicates

Sea squirts – friend or foe?

October 17, 2022

Emily Bay and Slaughter Bay have recently experienced a significant increase in the numbers of overgrowing tunicates. In this post I take a look at these critters – which, incredibly, are distant cousins to humans – and ask some questions about their presence and impact on our coral reef ecosystem.

Featured

August 1, 2026

Reflections of an accidental marine scientist

August 1, 2026

What 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.

August 1, 2026

July 24, 2026

From ridge to reef: unpicking the Waterway and Wetland Strategy

July 24, 2026

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.

July 24, 2026

July 13, 2026

Reef reality in pictures

July 13, 2026

Let the pictures do the talking. This is the reality on Norfolk Island’s reef today, laid out in a two-minute video.

July 13, 2026

June 28, 2026

The red seaweed behind low-methane beef

June 28, 2026

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 28, 2026

June 20, 2026

From coral scar to aatuti farm

June 20, 2026

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 20, 2026

June 15, 2026

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

June 15, 2026

June 14, 2026

How surgeonfishes got their name

June 14, 2026

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.

June 14, 2026

May 28, 2026

A shrimp storm

May 28, 2026

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.

May 28, 2026

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

May 28, 2026

May 24, 2026

Kingston dredging: the project advances, the questions remain

May 24, 2026

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 24, 2026

Out on A Swim

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