Out on a swim – reflections on wild swimming

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.

Day 5 – March focus on Norfolk Island’s reef

On day 5 of my March focus, I thought we’d dial down what’s in our environment and instead reflect on how we use our environment for recreation and for our physical and mental wellbeing.

Swimming has been with me all my life. It provides me with three wondrous things: time, space and connection. Time to myself. Time to contemplate, reflect, explore, see and watch. An endless, fathomless space where there is no one else but my own thoughts. And a connection with our natural world – something that is so important but so often not understood as being essential to our health and wellbeing.

For me, swimming in the ocean is the pinnacle of the swimming experience. It is multi-dimensional, responding to the pull of the Moon and the rotation of the Earth. Buoyed by the motion of the waves, I am connected to our planet, to my past and my future. It represents complete freedom.

And now it provides me with the added dimensions of awe and wonder. Something that was missing from the competitive rush and routine of my earlier swimming career – standing on the starting block, following the black line.

Where I swim today is a world away from swimming as a child in England. Green mould grew on the walls of the rather shabby indoor pool with its over-heated water, communal change rooms, and the ever-present threat of some nasty infection! Dressed in rubber swim hats with frilly flowers and chin straps, and heavy, knitted regulation-navy swimsuits, it’s amazing the experience didn’t dampen what became a lifetime love!

Swimming on Norfolk Island is a privilege and a delight. I am very fortunate. And I know there are many people who feel the same way about swimming here in our beautiful coral lagoons.

Sunday is the perfect day to get out into your environment and soak it all up, whether it’s somewhere in the water like me, camping in the bush, or walking through a park. Enjoy!

*The image (top) is of a swimming companion who obviously loves the wide-open spaces as well! Below are two other swimming enthusiasts swimming in the channel.

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.

April 5, 2026

What Norfolk Island’s reef tells us about environmental blind spots

The Kingston dredging proposal on Norfolk Island raises a bigger question than dredging alone: how well do standard environmental assessment tools capture the real significance of a remote and unusual reef system like Norfolk Island’s?

March 30, 2026

Hammer coral time!

Hammer corals have unique tentacles that are large, fleshy, and tubular; these terminate in a ‘T’-shaped, hammer-head or anchor. Beneath all these softly waving tentacles is an extraordinary skeleton structure, which helps define them as a large polyp stony coral.

March 24, 2026

Norfolk Island’s fishes: drifters, residents and the ones still missing

Norfolk Island’s fish fauna reflects both connection and isolation. Some species may arrive from elsewhere as drifting larvae, some populations appear to persist locally, and some fishes known from islands on either side of Norfolk have still not been recorded here. This post looks at what old survey work, regional checklists and genetic studies suggest about that more complicated picture.

March 7, 2026

Alveopora or flowerpot coral – how to tell the difference

They look alike at first glance, but Alveopora and flowerpot corals are not the same. The easiest way to tell them apart is to count the tentacles.

February 27, 2026

Norfolk’s lagoonal reef – the 2025 report, in plain English

We now have the 2025 Norfolk Island reef health report, so I’m taking the opportunity to translate it into plain English here. Sadly, it’s more of the same story in Emily and Slaughter Bays – a reef that can cope with some stress, but is being asked to cope with too much, too often.