‘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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Aerial image of Kingston Pier and the west end of Slaughter Bay, Norfolk Island. This map includes data from Airbus Imagery from the dates:20/06/2023–12/09/2023.
From Miami to Fiji, from Dubai to tiny village harbours on atolls, dredging near coral reefs has left a long trail of scars – even on ‘small’ projects. This follow-up to last week’s Kingston post walks through real examples of what happened elsewhere, and what that should make us think about before we dig up our own reef.
Read MoreA view to the west of the historic Kingston Pier, which directly adjoins the coral reef lagoon system of Emily and Slaughter Bays. The dredge site is on its east and southern sides.
How much risk are we really taking with the planned dredging at Kingston Pier – and how much protection do our corals actually have on paper? This piece walks through what the federal approval does and doesn’t guarantee, explains why sediment and light matter so much to the reef, and asks the hard questions we need answered before we trade a deeper channel for a shallower future.
Read MoreFigure 1: A clear lagoon and thriving corals – this is what the reef looks like when the water runs clean and the balance holds steady, taken on 6 November 2025, out where the tide and currents flush away the nutrients and any diseases. See the map below for where this one was taken (1).
After the long dry spell, the lagoon was crystal clear and full of life. But with the return of the rains, something else has returned too – the brown, filamentous mats of Lyngbya. It’s not seaweed, it’s a cyanobacterium, and when it takes hold it smothers coral and rubble alike. The reef’s way of showing us that every drop of water, from tank to tide, is connected.
Read MoreThis patch of Acropora is close to the colony discussed in this blog post, and is similar to how it would have once looked before disease took hold in that area..
I’ve tracked one plating Acropora coral from 2021 to 2025. In just a few weeks, white syndrome wiped it out. Nearly four years years on, it’s still smothered in algae and sea squirts, with only the tiniest hint of new growth. It’s a stark reminder: without tackling the root cause, we’re just watching the same sad story repeat itself.
Read MoreDay 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.
Read MoreI wrote about this massive coral in a blog post ‘The Ancient Massives’, 20 March 2022
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.
Read MoreHynophora pilosa colony, Norfolk Island
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.
Read MoreLone Pine, Emily Bay, Norfolk Island
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.
Read MoreAn Acropora coral colony, Emily Bay, Norfolk Island, showing early signs of growth anomalies
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.
Read MoreHealthy montipora coral, Norfolk Island
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.
Read MoreA view across to the inshore reef, Slaughter Bay, Norfolk Island
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.
Read MoreEmily Bay at low tide, early morning, December 2024
It is five years since I began wielding a camera underwater in Norfolk Island’s lagoons and my third ‘year in review’ for this ‘Out on a swim’ blog. And what a journey it has been. At least this year I have some great news to report, but – a bit like a curate’s egg (partly bad and partly good) – there are also some downers. Find out what 2024 has meant for Norfolk Island’s reef.
Read MoreThis Acropora colony on Norfolk Island’s reef was photographed in 2021. Today it is no longer there. Weakened by disease, it was destroyed by a storm surge two years later, in December 2023
If disease were spreading through our native forests, if our trees were developing strange growths that hollowed them out, making them brittle in the face of each passing storm, would five years have slid by with the problem worsening by the day? That is exactly what is happening on Norfolk Island’s reef. Slowly, insidiously, it is dying and turning to slime.
Read MoreExtensive area of acropora coral affected by white syndrome on Norfolk Island’s reef
CSIRO are on Norfolk Island this week to present the findings of their report into water quality. As our Administrator, George Plant, says: ‘What the data shows us is that the quality of ground and surface water entering Emily and Slaughter Bays often contains high levels of contamination ... The health of the Emily and Slaughter Bay reef will continue to decline if we do not improve water quality.’
Read MoreA juvenile Hawksbill sea turtle, Eretmochelys imbricata, inside Emily Bay lagoon, Norfolk Island, listed as critically endangered, according to the IUCN Red List, and vulnerable under the EPBC Act
Today's National Threatened Species Day post discusses the conundrum of Australia's threatened species list and the IUCN Red List as they relate to vulnerable and threatened species here on Norfolk Island in the Marine Park. How, for example, do we offer protections to something that hasn't been formally identified yet, let alone listed as threatened?
Read MoreHigh tide and pounding waves on Norfolk Island’s coral lagoon, southern shore, looking east towards Point Hunter
More reports to add to a long catalogue of reports were delivered to the general public over the last few days on Norfolk Island’s water quality and reef health. Reassuringly, they all say the same thing. Our poor water quality is affecting the health of our reef. So the science must be good! So when are we going to do something about it?
Read MoreIs this Atramentous Necrosis? This January, examples of this disease are popping up across Emily Bay on Norfolk Island
This month, I have increasingly noticed a disease that is presenting differently to the white syndrome that we have sadly become used to seeing. With this disease the coral goes grey-ish black and sometimes looks like it is almost dissolving or melting away. The result is a tragedy for the coral. I talk to coral health researcher Associate Professor Tracy Ainsworth about what is going on.
Read MoreAcropora coral, Norfolk Island, 14_StairwayReef, 14 November 2021
For two years, I have stopped by and photographed this beautiful Acropora coral formation in Emily Bay on Norfolk Island. In my database for this colony, I called the folder 14_StairwayReef; 14 for the geographic location on a map, followed by my romantic name for it. Today it is just so much rubble.
Read MoreWhite syndrome on a Hynophora pilosa colony, Norfolk Island, 23 November 2023
A pictorial study of the spread of white syndrome, over time, in a Hynophora pilosa colony on Norfolk Island. This beautiful coral colony is in the middle of the channel that runs between the contiguous Emily and Slaughter Bays, in Norfolk Island’s inshore coral reef lagoon. It’s one of my favourite places to pause and admire the scenery, when I’m out on my swim.
Read MoreMy grandson
What will my grandson see when he is old enough to snorkel on Norfolk Island’s reef? Will there be anything left as I know it? Or will he think it is all great because of that hoary old phenomenon called ‘shifting baseline syndrome’? This record of all my photos and observations will give him some idea of what we had in our bays in the 2020s.
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