Monthly Archives: July 2015

Bremer is a ‘Mecca’ for whale watchers 16/07/2015

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GEOFF VIVIAN

The Bremer Canyon has become a “mecca” for international whale watchers because it contains an important feeding ground for killer whales, or orcas.

Click on this image to read the story.

Click on this image to read the story.

“We’re getting international group bookings now where people are flying in from the States, from Europe, China, from wherever,” said film-maker and tour boat operator Dave Riggs.

[From The Great Southern Weekender, July 16, 2015, p7.]

The story goes on to talk about his new doco on Discovery Channel. 

In our interview he made an assertion about a scientific matter and, as neither he nor I are scientists, I ran it past a prominent cetacean researcher that I know. 

That is all a journlist needs to do when presented with a matter of “science” that is not in a reputable peer-reviewed journal – get an expert opinion.

 

Migratory birds find Kimberley safe haven via China 24/10/2013

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A SUB-SPECIES of a small shorebird spends much of the northern winter feeding at Roebuck Bay and Eighty Mile Beach in the Kimberley.

The red knot sub-species (Calidris canutus piersmai) breeds in the Siberian Arctic tundra, and travels to and from the Kimberley via China’s Yellow Sea—a round trip of at least 20,000km.

PhD student Ying Chi Chan is one of a group of Netherlands-based scientists conducting detailed longitudinal studies of shorebirds’ flight paths and foraging ecology.

“Habitat destruction is happening in a lot of places but the rate is particularly fast in China,” she says.

“The main thing I want to know is how the bird adapts to this change in environments.”

When I wrote this piece I was unaware of the Wilson Inlet (Denmark WA)’s importance to this intrepid little traveller.

Science Network WA [read this story]

More research needed into Roebuck Bay menu options 24/12/2013

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Last  months story about Wilson Inlet (Denmark, WA) shorebirds has prompted me to post this story from two years ago.

From the Broome Advertiser, March 13, 2014. Click on this image to read the story.

From the Broome Advertiser, March 13, 2014. Click on this image to read the story.

The Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research is the world centre for shorebird ecology.

Dutch biologists Tanya Compton and Marc Lavaleye have been to Broome a couple of times to sample and assess the marine life that migrating shorebirds feed on during their annual stay.

They say the relative population of bivalves, worms and crabs has changed every time they have been there.

Science Network WA [read this story]

The Broome Advertiser republished this story.