Enormous surf, squally winds and poor viz!

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.

On the 26 May, we witnessed a clear sky and a lunar eclipse. For a few days before this event, we’d had cool blustery winds from the south and southwest. But the day following it became calm and settled, so much so even my weather app decided winds of less than 1 km an hour should be expressed as ‘calm’!

The following day, the weather quickly turned again, and the remainder of this week has seen enormous surf, squally winds and poor visibility in the water. In fact, just about zero viz!

Today is the first day of winter, with cool winds blowing straight up from Antarctica. Many readers will laugh, but for a sub-tropical island, we are really feeling the wind chill at the moment. In a conversation I had with a fellow swimmer this morning, we agreed that if you just keep swimming, you don’t even notice it getting cooler. It really is a case of mind over matter. When it gets a little cold in the water, or rather when I get out, I always remind myself that there are reef fish in there, and they don’t like cold water! Like the beautiful Three-striped butterflyfish, Chaetodon tricinctus, drawn by @narwee_sketch for us this week.

Despite the conditions, I only missed swimming on one day, and I still managed to see a few beautiful things during the week. I always love to capture a photo of the green moon wrasse, Thalassoma lutescens. This one is giving me a quizzical sideways glance! And I was lucky enough to witness an initial phase surge wrasse, Thalassoma purpureum, eating a crab lunch.

Another exciting observation this week was the turtle. It always feels such a privilege to come around a corner and face to face with one of these amazing creatures.

Surge wrasse - Thalassoma purpureum

Green moon wrasse - Thalassoma lutescens

Green sea turtle - Chelonia mydas

Tonna melanostoma

Professor Andrew Baird, a researcher from James Cook University contacted me this week about my images of corals on this website (check them out here). So he could have a better look, I uploaded around 350 of them to a Dropbox folder. He has kindly gone through them, giving me IDs on many, and asking for some further images on a few he thinks maybe rare or endemic to Norfolk Island.

This is incredibly exciting. Andrew and a colleague plan to visit in August to have a look for themselves.

And, saving the most exciting news til last, and a little delayed as I have been waiting on confirming an ID: on 10 May I photographed a tun shell in the bay and uploaded the images to iNaturalist. Many regular swimmers will see these from time to time in the deeper areas of our bays, although sightings are definitely becoming rarer. Tuns are a large species of sea snail, or mollusc. This particular tun was quickly identified as being Tonna melanastoma. This truly is an amazing observation. There have been very few specimens identified over the last century, often trawled up from depths of 300 m. Apparently, this is the only photograph of a live mollusc in the public domain.

Since then, I have co-authored a paper with Chris Vos, a Belgian conchologist with some 45 years’ experience in the field. It is going to be published in August in a journal in Europe. I’ll definitely keep you posted on this one!

November 3, 2026

Familiar faces – getting to know the reef’s residents

Six years of swimming the same little reef have introduced me to some unforgettable characters that I’ve followed over time. From familiar fish and anemones to turtles and a snail’s eggs, this final article in my photographic series explores what I’ve learned about the lives of individual animals simply by returning, watching and taking photographs.

November 1, 2026

When algae move in – the changing reef neighbourhood

Algae are a natural part of Norfolk Island's reef, changing with the underwater seasons. But sometimes their beautiful green growth conceals a rather sad story. In the fifth article of my six-part photographic series, I revisit familiar places to see how algae have changed over the years – and what might be hiding underneath.

October 30, 2026

The slow disappearance – disease on the reef

What happens after coral disease has run its course? In the fourth article of my six-part photographic series, I revisit colonies I've watched lose living tissue, sometimes alarmingly quickly. From a potentially century-old brain coral that lost most of its living tissue in less than 100 days to the algae-covered skeletons left years later, these photographs reveal the longer-term consequences of coral disease on Norfolk Island's reef.

October 28, 2026

When storms rearrange the reef

Sometimes the sea rearranges a reef in a matter of hours! In the third article of my six-part photographic series, I revisit corals broken, overturned or swept away by powerful swells and storm surges. Some disappeared altogether, while others found surprising ways to survive. Five photographic sequences reveal just how dramatically Norfolk Island's reef can change.

October 26, 2026

When the reef fights back – coral growth and recovery

Not every coral story ends badly! Among six years of underwater photographs are some wonderful examples of growth, survival and recovery. From corals that have grown spectacularly to others that have survived bleaching, breakage or even being turned upside down, this second article in my photographic series celebrates some of the reef's more encouraging stories.

October 24, 2026

The neighbours – six years of watching the same reef

When I began photographing Norfolk Island's reef in 2020, I simply recorded whatever caught my eye. Six years later, those photographs have become a record of individual corals and their changing fortunes – growth, competition, survival and loss. This is the first of six articles looking back at what I've seen, and sometimes what I wish I hadn't.

October 10, 2026

Pulling the rugosity from out of the reef

What do ‘rugosity’, structural complexity and channeling your inner fish have in common? Quite a lot, as it turns out. This week I’m looking at how all the lumps, bumps, branches, holes and ledges on a reef create habitat – with a brief detour into one of my long-standing tricks for navigating tertiary study: write down the jargon until it starts to make sense.

September 27, 2026

How does a sea slug smell?

It started with a close-up of a little Elysia and two rhinophores that looked like tiny rolled-up scrolls. Once I noticed them, I started going back through years of sea-slug photos and realised just how wildly different these sensory organs can be – ridged, rolled, curled, tubular and, in sea hares, distinctly rabbit-eared. So this week’s rabbit hole is all about how sea slugs ‘smell’ underwater, and why their noses come in so many different shapes.

September 19, 2026

The Elite Fleet sails in

Nearly six years ago, my very first blog post was about the strange blue and violet creatures that live at the ocean’s surface – a group I christened Norfolk Island’s ‘Elite Fleet’. Since then I’ve seen plenty of bluebottles and the occasional violet sea snail, but never a by-the-wind sailor. Until this morning. Velella velella is not a true jellyfish, but a colonial hydrozoan with a transparent sail that lets the wind help carry it across the ocean. So what exactly is this extraordinary little creature, how does it ‘sail’, and what connects it to the rest of the fleet?

September 18, 2026

In a nutshell – where I stand on the proposed Norfolk Island Marine Park

I support the proposed expansion of Norfolk Marine Park and its renaming as Norfolk Island Marine Park. There is much to welcome – strong offshore protection, no mining, and recognition of the importance of sustainable local fishing. But I also have some reservations. Why does Cascade need to be removed from the Marine Park at all? How will more than 430,000 km² actually be monitored and enforced? How do we make sure Norfolk people have a genuine role in management? And, above all, how do we ensure that the enormous new park does not draw attention away from the small, stressed reef immediately beside us?