Habitat to Habitat
Sandy Shores

Book Review Greeniology

Damien Hardman
Triple World Champion

Bron is having a day off and Anth forgot to bring in the weather forecast. Dave and Anth are feasting on a foot long chocolate fish as part of the Easter celebration.

There have been a mass escape of King Fish from a fish farm off SA. They were last seen in a well defined spot of water known as the ocean and were being hunted down to be recovered by the head wrangler.

The collective noun of the week is for sharks: a school or a shiver.

Thanks to our listeners who contributed as list of collective nouns for the mullet (the haircut). Ideas were: a Ringwood, and 80's, an St Kilda Footy Team, a Billy Ray Cyrus, a Seinfield, a Holden, and a Salon

One of the most famous and familiar habitats in Australia, but so little is known about them. Historically viewed as marine deserts but they are amongst the most physically controlled marine environments - many more engineers have studied them than biologists.

A few definitions:
"The Beach" is everything from highest reach of tides and waves to outer limit of surf-zone or surf-circulation cells. Sediment size generally b/n 0.05 and 4 mm - but can have larger grit and shells (esp England!)

Where does a beach come from? Basically from eroding coastlines, river discharges and seafloor moved onshore by waves but sediment from various sources e.g., Western coastline (e.g., Broome) sediment mainly come from continental shelf and is biogenic (from biological origins) carbonate sands; Southern (e.g., Bass Strait) sediment is terrigenous (from land-based origins) quartz.

There is a huge variation in beach look (shape, size, grain size) and it all depends on the shape of the underlying land (the basic template), the types and frequency of waves/water movement (the shaping mechanism), the local coastline shape (sediment transport) and the seafloor shape offshore (wave shaping).

Water moves in and through the sand as well as over it.

1. - This is very important for the types of organisms that live there and how they live.
2. - Sand is porous and waves influence the water in the sand through "Wave Pumping". Waves come and in out and the pressure in the water in the sand changes (can be big - up to 50 m3 in a day in 1m wide sand strip in Sth Africa - that is ~4 x 4 x 4m!).

Biology in sandy shores
The water column
1. - phytoplankton (esp diatoms);
2. - drifting macrophytes (algal) and the associated animals (1 study in WA in 1980s found 1200 m3 per km of detached plant material in surf zones of sandy beaches! = ~11 x 11 x 11m!

Living on it was many many organisms, esp crusteceans - copepods ~100-200 individuals/gram!);
1. - micro-organisms and zooplankton (esp crustaceans);
2. - fish - most studied component. Detached algae may be an important nursery habitat.

In/on the sand
1. - plants - diatoms.
2. - Interstitial fauna - pore space size: ~40% of total sediment volume. Many little things like bacteria etc live in there;
3. - Macro fauna dominated by molluscs, crustaceans, polychaetes. Bivalve Donax (the pipi!) most abudant mollusc on Australian beaches. Look out for Solder crabs and their rolls of sand.
4. - Decrease the wave exposure leads to an increase macrofauna.
5. - Oxygen important to all interstitial animals. Many eat particles of organic matter.
6. - Megafauna like turtles & birds. Beaches essential part of lifecycle - usually on their reproduction.

Being green without cramping your style. Tanya Ha has pulled together a whole range of information from a range of different sources to provide you the tools to live a green life, but doesn't hit you on the head to push you to a particular behavior.

Tanya is with Planet Ark - which is focusing on providing positive and useful information, and is unashamedly populist.

Dave was particularly taken by the renovating bits, and the links between George Bush Snr and hemp.

The team consensus was 4 seastars out of 5.

A goofyfooter from Narabeen with 19 career victories and he retired in 2001. Bells is the longest running pro event in the world. Bells is set up with a range of breaks in a natural ampithetre - ideal for surf comps. The surf has not been good so far in the comp, but they are back on track today.

The expression sessions are on at the moment - where the pros head out and whoever have the best individual trick takes away the ($1000) prize.

The standard of surfing is continuing to rise and the tour is going to better waves, and the standard has improved by 30% in the last couple of years. It is a combination of better gear and improved speed and agility.

While there is no substitute for time in the water, there is as increase in the cross training using other techniques, because the competition is getting closer and closer.

Thanks to Justin Kemp from RLYSS for joining us in the studio.

" Under water light "

" PLOG "

" Mambo Mania "

Not Drowning Waving

Burt Kaempbert and Orchestra

Brett is in Warnambool - diving for a holiday. As a psychic dive reporter, Brett suggests beaches south of Mornington should be good.

The vis is not great in Western Vic at the moment, but all the other marine things were going well (ask the penguins and the small sealion)