After a challenging few months in our coastal waters, our underwater camera at Edithburgh jetty is live again. Bringing this stream back online has been a priority for us, not just because people enjoy checking in on the daily activity beneath the jetty, but because long-term vision helps us understand how conditions are changing over time.
The first thing you’ll notice in the stream is the colour of the water. It’s still quite green, a reminder of the HAB event that continues to move throughout the region. Visibility shifts throughout the day, and the seafloor is still recovering, but even with these changes we’re beginning to see life return.
In the past few days, small fish have been back under the jetty, cruising around the pylons as usual. It’s a simple but encouraging sign that life is ticking along again down there.
We were also happy to spot a western blue groper drifting past the camera on Friday. For those familiar with these waters, gropers are a reassuring presence — long-lived, slow-moving fish that tend to favour stable habitats. Seeing one return to Edithburgh so soon is a positive indication that the reef community is starting to settle again.
We’ll keep watching the jetty over the next few weeks and months. Seeing the changes play out on the stream gives us a good sense of how things are tracking.
For now, we’re simply glad to reconnect everyone with the underwater world of Edithburgh and to share these early signs of life returning.
You can watch the live stream for free at ausocean.tv.
AusOcean is a not-for-profit ocean research organisation that supports open source practices. Open source approaches to tackling environmental issues means embracing collaborative tools and workflows which enables processes and progress to be fully transparent. A critical aspect of working open is sharing data not only with your immediate team but with others across the world who can learn, adapt and contribute to collective research. By contributing to, and supporting open practices within the scientific community, we can accelerate research and encourage transparency. More info at https://www.ausocean.org/info.
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