Can Norfolk Island claim the Southern Hemisphere’s oldest surf lifesaving club? Read on to find out more ..read more

A close relative of corals and jellyfish, sea anemones are soft-bodied animals that ensnare passing prey with their stinging tentacles. No one really knows how long they can live, but in the wild they are thought to live for more than a hundred years. They have some clever adaptations that contribute to their longevity. Maybe they can teach us their secrets for a long life ..read more

After about 18 months of asking, and with the help of some wonderful people from the data department of the Atlas of Living Australia and the Australian Museum, the Atlas of Living Australia website now recognises iNaturalist citizen science observations for Norfolk Island. Which is definitely something worth celebrating ..read more

Three years ago, on 31 July 2020, we woke after a night of torrential rain to a scene of devastation in Emily Bay on Norfolk Island. Arguably one of the most beautiful bays in the world was a fetid, smelly mess caused by the raw sewage that had flowed from the poorly maintained sewerage works and private septic tanks, down the hill and into the bay. Read on to find out what has happened since that dreadful day ..read more

Many of the turtles that live in Norfolk Island’s coral-reef lagoons are juveniles. In other words, they are the future of their species, and an important piece in the genetic jigsaw. Yet they seem to fall through the cracks when it comes to being protected by the EPBC Act ..read more

This is a copy of the Australian Fishes journal post about new fish sightings on Norfolk Island: ‘This observation [of a black blenny] highlights the power of citizen scientists working with professional ichthyologists to achieve important outcomes,’ Mark McGrouther, Senior Fellow at the Australian Museum ..read more

One species that is doing remarkably well on Norfolk Island’s reef as it inexorably transitions from coral-dominated to algal-dominated is the banded scalyfin, , which is unsurprising as their main food source is algae. The downside is they harass and bully all the other species that come anywhere near their territory, to the detriment of our biodiversity. Find out more here ..read more

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 ..read more

It is fascinating to me that, in terms of biodiversity, there is still a slight feel of the frontier to Norfolk Island. So remote and isolated from any other land mass, it stands to reason that we have some different species that are found only here. On such is the Norfolk Island blenny ..read more

It’s always fascinating to see how fish change in appearance as they mature. Today’s blog post features the elegant wrasse, . But not only do they change how they look, they also change how they socialise and move about the reef ..read more