Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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My Daughter is Getting Married, And

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They went in search of oysters.

Caroline Marohasy and Christian Wright searching amongst beds of oysters on the rocks at a remove beach in East Arnhem.

He didn’t find a single pearl, rather he found the whole world. That’s true love.

I’ve always wanted the very best for my daughter. Now she is marrying the very best.

Yep. She is engaged. With a ring on her finger and a date for the wedding!

So, I will be the mother of the bride!

Christian proposing to Caroline, just recently.

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Feature picture (top photograph) is of some of us sitting in the water just after the surprise proposal, which was one Saturday morning on a little island off the top end of Australia, near Nhulunbuy.

Know Your Plates (Part 1)

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Reef building hard corals in the order Scleractinia are animals that could be mistaken for plants. One of the most common such corals at the Great Barrier Reef is Acropora hyacinthus.

At Myrmidon reef last December, we found ridges replete with these plates in various colours including brown and green.

A ridge of plate corals, photographed by Stuart Ireland at Myrmidon Reef on December 1, 2020.

More plate corals, photographed by Stuart Ireland snorkelling at Myrmidon Reef on December 1, 2020.

It was in the back lagoon at Russell Island two months later that I took very close-up photographs of this same coral species, including of brown plate corals that very close-up could perhaps be mistaken for a bouquet of pretty yellow flower buds. These ‘flower buds’ are the axial corallites on the ends of upward projecting branchlets. The individual coral polyps are sitting in the cup-shaped radial corallites along the branchlets.

This is a very up-close photograph of a brown plate coral. What you can see are the tips of the branchlets, as photographed by Jennifer Marohasy free diving at Russell Island on February 21, 2021.

This is a wide angle photograph of the coral from which the close-up was taken.

This is exactly the same coral as shown in the above two photographs, but from a different perspective.

These corals do not look like animals. But like all corals, each of the polyps (within the radial corallites along the branchlets) has animal features: a mouth surrounded by tentacles that can be extended and retracted.

The branchlets are on branches that extend vertically. With age the branches fuse together creating the plates.

Underwater photographer Leonard Lim took 360 photographs along transects at Pixie Reef on 22 and 24th February 2021. Many of the photographs from the habitat that I’ve designated ‘crest’ include plate corals of this species, Acropora hyacinthus. All the photographs can be viewed at the Pixie Reef Data Page 2021.

The third transect photograph from the reef crest taken by Leonard Lim on February 22, 2021 at Pixie Reef. There are another 359 that you can view at the Pixie Reef Data Page 2021.

I posted the first two transects photographs at my Facebook page recently (https://www.facebook.com/JenniferMarohasyOfficialPage/ go to 22nd and 23rd March), and I will be posting more in coming weeks. I am planning to quantify not only percentage coral cover from these photographs, but also the percentage of live plate coral in the genus Acropora.

I have complained previously that many of our expert marine biologists are making the most cursory of observations, and then extrapolating from these to arrive at the direst predictions for the entire Great Barrier Reef. One of my issues is that perceptions of the state of the Great Barrier Reef are now based largely on aerial surveys, specifically from 150 metres above coral reefs out of aeroplane windows during fly-pasts by Terry Hughes. I flew my drone at a much lower altitude to film Stuart filming the plate corals at Myrmidon on December 1, 2020. At just 30 metres above sea level it is impossible to see the corals, as I show in this short video, which is less than two minutes long.

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The feature image (at the top of this blog post) is of Shaun and Stuart snorkelling at Myrmidon, they were actually searching for Porites spp., while finding plates. We did do scuba, but these were exploratory snorkels to save our air tanks for when we found what we were looking for … old Porites, as explained in a previous blog post.

Britomart – Mostly Dead Coral, with Fish on Top

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Coral reefs are the most extraordinary places, and they are essentially layer upon layer of death. Topped with the most extraordinary diversity of life forms.

Consider Britomart Reef, for example, it is a mid-shelf coral reef 120 kms north of Townsville in the central Great Barrier Reef. The modern reef started to grow about 9000 years ago on a mound of limestone. Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed of calcium carbonate that was the skeleton of coral polyps. Dead coral is not limestone, it has to first undergo cementation.

The limestone at the very bottom of Britomart Reef would have been laid down around 125,000 years ago by hard corals when sea levels were a little higher than they are now.

Then this coral reef went extinct, as sea levels fell more than 120 metres. During the depth of the last ice age (16000 years ago) Britomart Reef would have been a ridge of limestone within a Eucalyptus woodland with the ocean about 64 kilometres further to the east.

Then the ice caps melted sea level rose, and eventually corals started to grow from the dead limestone. The corals hadn’t survived at Britomart, rather the corals recolonised at the beginning of the current geological epoch known as the Holocene.

The modern reef at Britomart is 25 metres thick, with most of this ‘reef mass’ accumulated between 8500 and 5000 years before present on top of the existing platform of limestone. So, the live coral at Britomart is but a thin veneer growing on top of 25 metres of dead coral – on top of the platform of limestone that dates to the Pleistocene.

We know this from coring – holes drilled through this reef back in the 1980s, analysed and radiocarbon dated. According to the paper by David Johnson, Christopher Cuff and Eugene Rhodes published in Sedimentology (volume 31, pages 515 to 529) the top 5 metres at Britomart Reef is classified as ‘fragmented coral boundstone’ that is ‘disoriented, abraded and bored, coral gravel up to 6cm across, which is encrusted and bound by coralline algae.’

That paper was published back in 1984. I dove at Britomart last November and while it was the prettiest of reefs, there were so many dead plate corals. I’m guessing these corals bleached over the last few summers and are now in various stages of decay.

The feature image (photograph at the very top of this blog post) shows a dead, and algal infested plate coral in the foreground. Can you see it? The second image (photograph below) shows dead plate corals as the ridge drops away. In the third image there are two very large dead plate coral to the left, and another towards the bottom of the drop-off. In the fourth picture I’m holding on to a more recently dead plate, now covered in algae.

There are lots of live hard and soft corals, but see also the dead plate corals down the slope. Photograph extracted from video filmed on 30th November 2020 by Stuart Ireland.
There are live and dead plate corals, with a very large ‘thick as a bread board’ dead plate coral in the bottom left of this photograph, extracted from video filmed by Stuart Ireland at Britomart reef on 30th November 2020.
Jen Marohasy/me holding on to a dead plate coral covered in algae. There are coralline algae growing over and through the wall of dead coral to the left, the other side of the clown anemone fish.

I’m posting these pictures to show what recently dead plate corals looks like, and to explain that the dead coral extends down 25 metres and represents continuous cycles of death and regrowth over the last 9000 years. This is to inform some discuss about corals at another reef, Pixie Reef. I’ve not been able to find any technical papers about Pixie, but I have started some discussion about Pixie at my Facebook page here https://www.facebook.com/JenniferMarohasyOfficialPage .

We are just starting to discuss the transects photographs in Table 1.1. (specifically the first and second photographs in the first transect) that include patches of what I am fairly sure are dead plate coral.

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Further reading:

David Johnson et al. 1984. Holocene reef sequences and geochemistry, Britomart Reef, central Great Barrier Reef. Sedimentology, 31, 515 – 529.

The photographs were all extracted from video filmed by Stuart Ireland, and one day it will be turned into a documentary.

Who Ate the Green Plate?

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I wasn’t the one who took that bite out of that green plate coral. Can you see what looks like a bite mark? It is at about 4 o’clock on the large, green, plate coral, which is also one of the transect photographs taken last week, on 22nd February at Pixie Reef by Leonard Lim.

Corals one metre along what was the second transect at 3 metres’ depth at the front of Pixie Reef on 22nd February 2021. Photo credit: Leo Lim.

I’m so proud of the 360 underwater photographs taken along 36 transects that were laid in four different habitat types: at the reef front, in the back lagoon, at the reef crest, and we also laid three transects at the bottom of the reef crest – beginning at a depth of ten metres at what I’m calling the western flank. It was hard work, over two days, but these photographs and the corresponding videos will provide some evidence as to the state of the corals at Pixie reef for that moment in time.

Table 1.1

Date: 22 Feb 2021
Habitat: Crest
Starting locations:
  Rep1: (16°32.717'S, 145°51.672'E), Rep 2: (16°32.711'S, 145°51.668'E),
  Rep3: (16°32.710'S, 145°51.663'E)
DepthRep@1m@2m@3m@4m@5m@6m@7m@8m@9m@10m
21
22
23

I was so grateful that we were able to lay transects along the reef front at Pixie. If you click on the thumbnails in the above table you will see some of the photographs. There will be many more uploaded at the ‘Pixie Reef Data Page 2021’ over the next couple of weeks. Leo took 120 photographs from the reef front at two different depths: 3 metres and also 6 metres.

Last November, I only visited the back lagoon. More usually, the prevailing wind is blowing onto the reef from the south east/from the front making access to this front section of the reef difficult. But on 22nd February the wind was blowing from the north northwest. (It was a hot day, and we did return to harbour under Anvil clouds, with Stuart bringing his little speed boat with us safely through a storm that afternoon. Thank you.)

This reef, Pixie Reef, was ‘surveyed’ back on 22nd March 2016 from the air by Terry Hughes of James Cook University during one of his fly pasts. It was concluded from that single observation/glance-down from 150 metres altitude that that this reef was 65% bleached. The inshore reefs north of Cairns were more or less all written-off, back then, by the experts and the mainstream media, as ruin – as dead. But they are not, not at all. (And I do worry for all the children who now believe this precious environment/the Great Barrier Reef is dead from ‘carbon dioxide pollution’.)

Pixie Reef was one of thousands of coral reefs ‘surveyed’ during March to April 2016, with the overall conclusion – reported on the front-pages of newspapers worldwide and now incorporated into schoolbooks – being that the Great Barrier Reef is more than half dead: that more than half of the corals have suddenly died from global warming.

It is my hypothesis that these coral health assessments of the Great Barrier Reef, comprising 1,156 reefs including Pixie Reef as published in the peer-reviewed technical literature by Terry Hughes and others, are yet another example of the mismatch between official government-sponsored (taxpayer funded) propaganda masquerading as science, versus reality.

Jen floating, with aerial photograph taken at 20 metres above the front of Pixie Reef on 22nd February, just before the thunderstorm hit.
Jen floating above the reef front, holding a safety sausage showing exactly one metre. This aerial was taken by Stuart Ireland at exactly 120 metres altitude.

It is only under the water that we can see the true state of the corals.

Of course, Pixie Reef is where I found and named that extraordinary, large and old Porites after Craig Kelly MP. I visited ‘Porites Craig’ again on 22nd February. That bolder coral still looks relatively pale from a distance, but up close it is evident that the massive coral colony/Porites Craig has a lot of colour – with all its corallites intact and healthy.

The massive Porites in the back lagoon at Pixie Reef. Photographed with me on 22nd February by Leo Lim.
Porites Craig is massive, and a thin veneer of living coral comprising so many corallites as shown in this photographs taken by me (Jennifer Marohasy) on 22nd January 2021.

There is such a diversity of different coral types, coral species and in so many different coral colours at Pixie Reef.

And what about that green plate coral – with the bite mark? (Could it be from the pixies?)

A green plate coral missing some/with a bite mark.

I hypothesis that the little beige-coloured brain coral, which you can see directly under what I am describing as the bite mark, is responsible. This is perhaps a species of FavitesSymphyllia, and it could be extending its tentacles at night and eating up that section of plate coral directly above it. Very likely the Symphyllia sp.Favites sp. is eating away at the Acropora sp., so it has access to sunlight for its own zooxanthellae.

There are so many of them at Pixie Reef – all different types of corals including healthy plate corals in shades of green and also brown. You can see them in the transect photographs, click across to the new page where they will be uploaded over the next couple of weeks: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/coralreefs/pixie2021/ .

So many pretty corals, but no pixies.

Postscript

This is Part 4 of ‘Measuring Old Corals & Coral Reefs’, essentially written to let everyone know about the new data page for Pixie Reef. You can access other data pages here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/coralreefs/

There has already been a Part 1 and a Part 2:
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/2020/11/measuring-old-corals-coral-reefs-part-1/
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/2021/01/measuring-old-corals-coral-reefs-part-2/

The blog post about the garden of old Porites at Myrmidon should really be Part 3, ‘tis here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/2020/12/gardens-of-old-porites-without-sharks/

And so much thanks to Leonard Lim and Stuart Ireland for all the photographs and video from Pixie last week, and to The B. Macfie Family Foundation for believing in us.

Pixie Reef on 22nd February 2021 from about 120 metres looking to the east. Photo credit: Stuart Ireland.

Why Craig Kelly Resigned on Tuesday

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Craig Kelly has a huge following on Facebook. His daily posts were ‘liked’ and ‘shared’ by thousands, until he was blocked – disallowed, censored. His page is still there. He just can’t post anything. The banner at the top of his page says:

Today’s truth is frequently tomorrow’s error. There is nothing absolute about the truth … if the truth is to emerge and in the long run triumph, the process of free debate – the untrammelled clash of opinion – must go on.

Craig is quoting Australia’s longest serving Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies.

Last Tuesday, on 23rd February 2021, he handed his letter of resignation to the current Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. That was in the Great Hall of the Australian Parliament in front of the joint party room: 110 Senators and Members of the House of Representatives belonging to the Liberal and National Parties.

He has been a member of Parliament for over a decade, and he does make close friends. In making the speech that he did at 11.20 am that morning/Tuesday morning, Craig knew he would be losing some of his closest friends, and perhaps forever.

Craig phoned me yesterday to chat about it – while he packed up to leave Canberra after a tumultuous week. He was heading home: back to Sydney where he lives. But there is no refuge anywhere for Craig. Just two weeks ago, during a home invasion, someone flew the Islamic flag from his bedroom window and photographed it there while accusing him of being a supporter of the caliphate. Also recently, he was accused in the Sydney Morning Herald of being anti-Semitic because he described Dr Zev Zelenko as having a long Jewish beard. That is a fair description of the physical appearance of the American doctor who has recommended the drugs Hydroxychloroquine, Zinc and Azithromycin as a treatment for Covid. Craig is actually a fan of Zev’s – on the public record as describing Zev as a true hero, and someone from whom he (Craig Kelly) draws strength, courage and inspiration.

Craig likes people, and people of all ethnicities. He grew up in the 1970s, with a father who travelled the world buying wholesale for his successful furniture business in south western Sydney. Craig got to go on some of these overseas adventures: down the back streets of far-flung places from Hong Kong to Istanbul, where his father would seek out, not only the best business deal, but also the best of the local foods – especially the sweets.

Like his father, Craig cares about small business and also people, and their capacity to make their own decisions about how they furnish their home, what they choose to eat, and what medications they choose to take or reject. In his letter of resignation given to the Australian Prime Minister on Tuesday Craig wrote:

I acknowledge that some of my conduct over recent months has not helped … has made it difficult for you and the government. However, at all times I have acted upon my conscious and my beliefs – not political expediency.

My goal has only been to save lives and ensure that my constituents and all Australians, were not denied access to medical treatments if their doctors believe those treatments could save their life.

Craig was censored by Facebook for posting a quote from Professor Tom Borody who advocates Ivermectin, when combined with Doxycycline and Zinc, as an early treatment for Covid. Professor Borody is another of Craig’s heroes: recognized worldwide for his innovative clinical work and research into complex gastrointestinal disorders and infective disorders.

Another professor, probably Australia’s most senior immunologist, Robert Clancy, has also suggested there are alternatives to vaccination for the treatment of Covid. In a recent interview on ABC radio Professor Clancy made mention of a recent scientific review that summarises 43 different studies on Hydroxychloroquine, concluding that:

HCQ is consistently effective against COVID-19 when provided early in the outpatient setting, it is overall effective against COVID-19, it has not produced worsening of disease and it is safe.

So, why is Facebook banning Craig and why did the Australian Prime Minister’s Office ask that Craig Kelly remove – that he delete – 20 previous Facebook posts?

It was reported by The Guardian newspaper that up to 70 posts had disappeared from Craig’s Facebook page – the inference being that he/Craig had deliberately deleted them.

Craig has told me that all his Facebook posts are still there, and he has no intention of removing any of them. Craig tells me that he stands by everything that he has written on Facebook as accurate and correct. He acknowledges that others may disagree, and that he is keen to discuss why, especially with reference to clinical trials and published scientific papers.

Craig acknowledges that he is neither a scientist nor a doctor – but rather a politician with a keen interest in these issues who will always make-up his own mind based on reading and consulting widely. I know from personal experience that Craig will spend hours discussing detail and seemingly anomalous results always in search of the truth. Craig and I both enjoy the technical, and we both like puzzle solving.

My expertise, and most recent peer-reviewed published papers, are in climate science. Craig has been known to text me at midnight, asking for clarification about some detail pertaining to how air temperatures are measured and/or the historical temperature record for Australia remodelled/homogenised by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Craig attempted to raise the issue of the world’s longest heat wave record in the Australian parliament a couple of years ago. Specifically, Craig was attempting to draw attention to how the historical observations/temperature measurements have been changed, and how the values as originally recorded at Marble Bar between 31 October 1923 and 7 April 1924 have been adjusted down.

When the Australian Bureau of Meteorology cools the past – as it does with most of the 112 temperature series used to construct the official statistics – current temperatures appear hotter. The remodelling of Marble Bar has, to quote Craig, also robbed Australia of the world’s longest heatwave record. This now goes to Death Valley in California.

Whether it is climate science or medical science, Craig revels in the detail. It is his current inability to communicate this detail, or to defend himself against accusations that he is promoting unproven treatments for Covid, that left him with no choice but to resign from the government on Tuesday.

He made up his mind last weekend. He finished drafting his letter of resignation to the Prime Minister Monday night. He also wrote a letter that same night to the Speaker, informing him of his resignation and asking for a reallocation of seating in the chamber and that he be given indulgence to address the house/the parliament.

Last Tuesday morning was really difficult for Craig.

The first thing the Prime Minister asked Craig when he gave him his letter of resignation was, ‘Why didn’t you tell me first’.

Had Craig told Scott Morrison of his intension to resign first, Craig believes that the Prime Minister would have denied him the opportunity to address his colleagues that morning in the joint Party room. There was nothing more important to Craig, than what he calls ‘eyeballing’ his colleagues, and explaining his decision: a most difficult decision – to leave the team, the government – his government.

Looking people in the eye, and having a firm handshake are both characteristics of Craig Kelly.

They are traits I so remember of my father, who like Craig’s father, travelled the world through the 1970s – but as an agricultural scientist working on international aid projects. Dad would often take me with him, and I also got to eat the most delicious foods. Dad liked his sweets, but also the hottest chilli sauces in the back streets of Jakarta.

I never got to meet Craig’s father, but I did go to his funeral, out of respect for Craig.

Craig Kelly is a good friend of mine, and his particular perspective on alternative treatments for Covid are worthy of scrutiny. And like Craig, I am of the opinion that the Covid vaccines now being rolled out across Australia may not be the best choice for everyone. More than anything else, just like the flu vaccines, it should be up to the individual whether they choose to be vaccinated – or not.

Update 31 May 2021
David Archibald just published this data on Ivermectin and ‘whole of country trials’ that backs up what Craig has been asking for … choice in terms of what we can use to prevent and/or treat Covid, there should be more options than just vaccine:
https://wentworthreport.com/ivermectin-whole-of-country-trials-in-real-time/

Writing in the Mountain Home magazine, Michael Capuzzo has put together a compelling narrative in support of Ivermectin that is also damning of mainstream medicine and their ability to act in the best interests of the individual when it comes to the oh-so political Covid-19: https://www.mountainhomemag.com/2021/05/01/356270/the-drug-that-cracked-covid

photograph
The feature image shows Craig Kelly in the Australian National Archive checking actual historical temperature records, and comparing them with values currently listed by the Bureau.

Fly-Past Coral Surveys, And

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This morning, Peter Ridd’s legal team will be asking the High Court to hear his appeal against his sacking by James Cook University.

The High Court does not agree to hear most cases. They consider cases that have a wider legal implication. His legal team continue to focus on the academic/intellectual freedom clauses in most university enterprise agreements and on this basis, they are hopefully the High Court will see the case as important. I continue to wish there was more interest in the actual science.

Peter Ridd was a professor at James Cook University for more than two decades. He was fired in 2017 for saying that because of systemic problems with quality assurance, work from the university’s Coral Reef Studies centre, at the time headed by Terry Hughes, was untrustworthy. Peter’s issues were many and varied.

My issues relate specifically to the aerial surveys of coral bleaching by Terry Hughes from which it has been concluded that the Great Barrier Reef is half dead.

There has been very little scrutiny of the methodology underpinning these aerial surveys. It is actually impossible to make any meaningful assessment of coral reef health from more than 120 metres above a coral reef – which is the altitude from which Professor Hughes has been conducting his flyovers. It is easy enough to demonstrate this by putting a drone up over different habitat at the same, and different, coral reefs. I’ve also been getting in and under the water to assess the corals close-up.

This is all explained in a new ‘coral reef’ page at my website, from which you can click-on and see some of the transects we ran at the reefs we visited. It is still in a work in progress: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/coralreefs/ .

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The feature image is my buddy swimming over a garden of massive Porites, Myrmidon Reef, December 1, 2020.