COMMENTS & OBSERVATIONS

The strong south-easterlies keep on blowing but we noticed that early morning we are getting light south-westerlies so we took the chance to jump in at Horseshoe Bay before the stronger winds arrived and increased the swell and surge.

Visibility was better than it has been with around 2-3m of visibility once you got out past the sand. The water temperature has dropped significantly and was a little on the cool side (especially for the tropics). Due to the persistent surge in the shallows we concentrated our search in depths around 5m. Unfortunately this area yielded a low critter count with only 2 species observed. At this site we generally find most of the critters in around 3m of water on the algae covered rocks.

Despite the low count and no new finds it was still nice to spend the morning blowing bubbles.

The Phyllidiella sp. a in the species lists below refers to a taxonomic-cryptic species delineated in the paper:
Papu, A., Bogdanov, A., Bara, R., Kehraus, S., Konig, G., Yonow, N. & Wagele, H. (2022). Phyllidiidae (Nudibranchia, Heterobranchia, Gastropoda): an integrative taxonomic approach including chemical analyses. Organisms Diversity & Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13127-021-00535-7
At the time of publishing this report we are in the process of reviewing all of our Phyllidiella records to align them with the findings of the above paper.

Taxonomic Diversity:
–

Our Historical data:
– We have now completed 11 surveys and recorded 33 species at Horseshoe Bay since our first survey here on 12/06/2018.
– Our last survey at this site was on 26/04/2024

Guide to Symbols:
+++ New Species
+ First time sighted in Whitsundays
# Most commonly sighted at this site with %

TOTAL SPECIES SIGHTED: 2

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