Thoughtfactory’s Notebooks: The Littoral Zone

I have been staying away from the beaches on the Encounter  Coast during at the autumn and winter months due to the existence of the toxic micro algae bloom --- Karenia mikimotoi --- that is caused by marine heating. Karenia mikimotoi is  a type of plankton that  is toxic because  it sucks the oxygen out of the water as it dies and decomposes, effectively suffocating marine life. 

The algae  has spread from the Coorong to  the York Peninsula in South Australia and it  has resulted  in  lot of marine life dying  and devastated the Great Southern Reef. 

It is only in July, after the algae bloom had broken up  along the Encounter Coast from the winter storms,   that I returned to walking amongst the ephemeral seaweed on the beach on an  early morning poodlewalk. This part of the  littoral zone  is ever-changing from day to day -- it really is a world of flux. 

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The photo  below is of a salt pond that was made whilst on  an afternoon  poodle walk  along  the littoral zone at low tide during the summer of 2025. The location  was the rocks lust west of  Petrel Cove along the Encounter Coast on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula.  

The pool of salt water between the rocks  is  ephemeral because  the  pool of seawater can only dry out  between the tides  with  the heat of the summer sun. The salt pond is then washed away with the next high  tide. 

It is Japanese aesthetics that enables us to  expand the western aesthetics beyond the recent return to beauty or the sublime so that we are able to  represent the ephemeral as the ephemeral. 

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This  study of sandstone cliffs  is from  a recent visit in March 2024 with friends to the Great Otway National Park in Victoria.  We were able to stay at the Cape Otway Light Station and they walked sections of the great ocean walk. 

I walked along the coast east of  Point Franklin towards Parker Inlet   at low tide scoping with a digital camera for a 5x4 photo session.  Sadly, I didn't do a 5x4 version of this picture. Access to this  coastal area could only be at low tide   The picture  that I did  make with e 5x4 have yet to be processed by the professional  photo  lab. 

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The close-up photo below is from a recent early morning poodlewalk with Maya amongst the coastal rocks between Petrel Cove and Kings Beach lookout in Waitpinga on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula: 

We  usually walk along the coastal path from Kings Beach Lookout towards Petrel Cove 40 minutes or so before sunrise.   Then we make our way back along the rocks after sunrise with the sun behind us.   There is only the odd dog walker on the coastal path  or a solitary fisherman on the rocks at that time of the morning. So it is easy to be in the moment whilst amongst the rocks.  

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This is   rare event  at Petrel Cove near Encounter Bay on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula:

 A 2.7 metre wide bump-head sunfish (Mola alexandrini). It hasn't been attacked.

I initially thought that the waters of the Southern Ocean would have been too cold as they mostly live in temperate and tropical oceans and interpreted this an indication  of  increasing marine temperatures.  However, I was informed that  the waters along Australia's  southern coast are temperate and these waters  in the southern hemisphere are its habitat. 

I returned a few days latter and it had gone. The tides had swept it back to the sea.