Thoughtfactory: The Littoral Zone

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. 

Autumn has arrived at Encounter Bay. I've started to return to walking amongst the coastal rocks with Maleko  on the late afternoon poodlewalks. This return happens when there is some cloud cover,  the light is soft and there are photographic possibilities.    

These walks are still infrequent. The morning cloud usually disappears during the day and the afternoons are  clear and sunny. The strong coastal winds that marked the summer months have eased.  

Read more

I have stayed away from walking amongst the coastal rocks. The  cold, south-westerly winds have been continual and persistent.  Some of the gusts  have been  close to gale force. I haven't been making many photos along the littoral zone as I have been walking in the bushland  to shelter from the wind. 

It was only occasionally during  the late spring month of November  that I would  do the coastal littoral zone walk with a camera in the late afternoon: --- the conditions were that  the wind had dropped, it was overcast, and there was some warmth. 

Read more

I saw these two cuttle fish shells yesterday morning when I was walking with Kayla near Petrel Cove.

 I went looking for them  this morning when I was walking with Maleko but they'd gone. The tides  had washed the shells away. 

I've been going the archives of what I call  my macro photographs. 

The picture below was made  about the same time (circa 2019) as the images on this post on Thoughtfactory's photo blog and with the same macro camera equipment. It was the colours of the quartz that initially caught my eye. Then I saw the seaweed strand lying across the quartz vein. 

 I thought that this moment wouldn't last very long, as the coastal wind would quickly move the shape and the  line of the seaweed strand, then eventually  blow it off the quartz.  So I quickly made a photo. 

I was on a poodlewalk at the time,  and I was looking for some dried salt ponds among the granite rocks to photograph.  We would have   been walking in the  late afternoon.

Read more