2014 Cleanup Benefit Gig

Come and join us Friday the 21st of March for an evening of good tunes and good vibes.  The Dave Wilson Band and Lively Up will be cranking out the music with all door takings donated to the Cleanup fundraising efforts.

Rising plastic menace choking sealife

Monday, 9 July 2012 Stuart Gary

ABC

The amount of plastic pollution in the Pacific Ocean has reached alarming levels, drastically impacting seabird populations, according to a new study.
Scientists at the University of British Columbia looked at populations of Northern Fulmars, a bird species distributed widely in the north Atlantic and north Pacific.
They found that more than 92 per cent of dead birds on beaches in British Columbia, Canada, and the US states of Washington and Oregon, had ingested significant quantities of plastic refuse.

For the full article click te lin below

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/07/09/3540635.htm

Prion Beach Monitoring

Have just returned from two trips down to Prion Beach and New River Lagoon. Had an amazing time looking for old sand dunes to date. We managed to cover a fair bit of ground thanks to Phil Kelleys SS Ashtray a 12 foot Inflatable. Once on land we negotiated the 8 foot high stinging nettle thickets in the frontal dune swales and found some beautiful coastal rainforests.

I have attached a rough field map to show the spots we visited (green stars) and erosion monitoring transects we put in (yellow).

Soil work in PNG

Finally got the chance to get to PNG to look at the soils and agricultural areas I have been modelling for the past 6 months. Its a fantastic country and people were amongst the friendliest I have ever met on my travels. We managed to get to Owers Corner and check out the start of the Kakoda Track which would have to be some of the most rugged precipitous terrain I have ever seen in the tropics.

3 Capes Track Mapping

I have just spent the last month assessing the Geoheritage Values for the proposed Three Capes Track. Its been a treat being dropped by helicopter at any point along the track, bushwalking for 6 to 8 hours and then being picked up at the end of the day. The highlight however has been discovering 20 metre high longitudinal sand dunes on top of 300 metre high cliffs. These dunes also provide enough of a barrier to dam drainage lines and host semi permanent water as 40 metre long waterholes.

Cleanup 2011

This years cleanup once again broke the Item record with the hardy team of 23 volunteers collecting over 18000 items. Check out the promo video produced by Patagonia's Johnny Abegg.

South West Marine Debris Cleanup - Tasmania from Johnny Abegg Films on Vimeo.

Carton Beach Timeseries

As promised here is the first of the timeseries aerial photography case studies for the Federal Department of Climate Changes Shorewave Project. The project is looking at what information on shoreline behaviour can be derived from historical aerial photography, historical climate information and modelled wave and fetch data. If you click on the slideshow it will open at a larger scale in Picasa Web Albums. Note the steep beach profile in the 1975 photo which was the last big 'La Nina' event. Hopefully we will get some more swells like that year.