Exploring The Capricornia Group

 As we dropped our sails to cross the bar into Pancake Creek we noticed 3 other boats there, a lot quieter than previous visits.  Next day 2 boats left and the third, a fishing boat, trawled back and forth along the creek then left as well... ahhh, the place to ourselves! 

Just us and the usual red-caped plovers on the sand bars, along with a few red-necked stints, one whimbrel and one silver gull (seagull).  Oh, and a committee of pelicans planning their fish-of-the-day, no doubt.

With calm seas forecast we then sailed up to Masthead Island, a new destination for us.  

The island is quite large and the coral cay surrounding it is massive.  On high tide we tried to kayak into the beach passing a sand bar full of terns, a few pied oystercatchers, 2 ruddy turnstones, 1 grey tattler and some lesser sand plovers, who mostly all ignored us. 

Beche de Mer, aka Trepang, aka sea cucumbers were all through the coral. 

The National Park campground, amidst the turtle hatchery, looked quite challenging for pitching a tent, with big empty turtle nests through the sand. 

On the beach reef egrets went about their hunting while thousands of noddies flew low across the water, back and forth to their nests, feeding their chicks.  

               

                            

As we hooked up a mooring at North West Island, another new destination for us, which had years earlier been a turtle hunting and mining site, now recovering well as a National Park, a Marine Parks boat came over to give us a fun pack, with information about Green Zones, Eye on the Reef App and No Smoking in National Parks (as if you would).  The MP Ranger said if we left a light on at night we might see turtle hatchlings swimming out to sea.  Along with lots of small fish, our light showed us many tiny turtles beginning their big lifetime of adventure – so cute!

It looked a bit tricky to kayak to the beach as high tide was late in the afternoon, so we dinghied in and found a wonderful walk from the camp site to the southern beach.  It meandered through pisonia trees full of noddy nests and shearwater burrows, so we had to take care where to walk.  

Despite the constant chatter of the noddies and their chicks we heard a wompoo fruit-dove (they are always hard to see in foliage).  The southern beach had many silver gulls, maybe waiting to catch a slow turtle hatchling, and a few reef egrets of white and grey morph.

That time of year...

Out with the kitchen scales - it's that time of year again:  life jacket
testing, then back to sewing days again.

(meanwhile I'm trying a new method of blog from email. let's see what
happens in dodgy phone service areas.)

Flat out at Fraser

Beautiful still morning after storms and rain last night.

The Battle of Rooney Point

 

Not long after we anchored near Rooney Point, with hardly another boat around, big schools of small fish gathered under our boat, sheltering in the new shade provided. 

A mob of crested terns were resting on the beach when they seemed to notice the fish around our boat.  The fish were venturing out in the open water to feed when the battle began:  Crested Terns vs Fish.  The terns seemed to be teaching their young how to catch the fish and chaos reigned for some time as they swooped and dived and called to each other with their rasping call.

Each day the fish would try to be brave and venture out but the terns were onto them and a new battle ensued.  So wonderful to watch nature at large.

Meanwhile our local green turtle just bobbed up every day to watch all the fuss, and a few dolphins cruised past, perhaps taking advantage of the opportunity for a feed too.

We were about to run our watermaker (desalinator) when Peter saw strings of jelly eggs floating past in the current.  What looked a bit like cane toad egg strings turned out to be very interesting animals: Salps.  Never even heard of them before!  

These creatures reproduce at such a rapid rate, they grow through two generations in one day, and such growth — up to 10 per cent of their body length per hour to be exact — requires an enormous food supply.

"You wouldn't believe how much these things eat," Dr Lisa Gershwin, A CSIRO scientist, said.

"So lets imagine that you're born at noon and by midnight you're already having babies and by noon tomorrow you're a grandparent."

She said the gelatinous creatures targeted phytoplankton and they digested that through their intestines, or the brownish-black dot.

"But anything that's small enough to get in their 'mucus net' can end up getting eaten.  They'll eat larvae and fish eggs but they're not targeting that, they're trying to find plant plankton."  (from an ABC News Report)

Now we have learnt a new animal!

Meanwhile, 8 arm sea stars were washed up along the beach, stranded by the tides.  They can regrow missing arms and move again...  Another animal to learn more about...

When the northerlies turned to easterlies the few other yachts that had anchored up at the point sailed away and we had the whole beach to ourselves ... bliss!  We kayaked to the beach for long walks each day and noticed that the pandanus and casuarinas were making a welcome recovery from last year’s fires.