My Marine Job - Lecturer - Dr Alecia Bellgrove

Marine National Parks - Sonia Lloyd

Bron and Anth are in the studio, with Mel doing her best pirate impressions (arrr, aggh etc) here on Radio Spittle. Today is the Equinox (watch out for pagans in your street - they will be having a party). The lowest low tides will be happening over the next couple of weeks - so get down to a rock pool near you.

The weather was quite short, so Bron and Anth discussed the need for some music for the weather.

Anths baby of the week is a mollusc - veliger, as small lump of shell with 2 beater type locomotion organs. They are small - less than one third of a mm and less.

Remember about a year ago we talked about the new seal hotel out in Port Phillip Bay - which the Government spent $250,000 on consultants to design and the seals avoided it. Well, now they have crapped on it and made it their own, the seals have embraced it as their own.

If you want to have a look at some heritage boats and listen to some pirate music, head to Williamstown new weekend, or visit their website.

Teaching and research are the two key activities - Writing the lectures can be fun or hard work, depending on how close it is to your area of expertise. The aim is to make it interesting and informative, but to key it into the primary research literature that is out there. As well as lecturing, the job includes research, both your own, as well as supervising honors, masters and PhD students.

Like many people, Alecia didn't start uni wanting to be a Marine lecturer. She started out wanting to be a school teacher, discovered her love of marine during Uni. From there, it was a matter of going for it - knowing what skills were needed and getting them, then going for it.

Sonia is Victoria's state wide marine planner - essentially looking at preparing plans for each of the marine National Parks in Victoria. This issues are not really the same with terrestrial parks (no need for walking tracks), but they are critical for guiding the field staff in their actions, based on the community needs and desires for the area and protection of the park values.

Managing parks that are completely off shore is a real challenge - they are much harder to mark and guide people around.

The Government has committed to completing plans for all parks in this term. As the planning process takes about 22 months, there are a number running in parallel in order to meet that commitment.

For more info call Parks Victoria on 13 19 63

No room to swing a cat - refers to there being insufficient room for a flogging with a cat-o-nine tails.

Let the cat out of the bag - means to do something that would cause the cat-o-nine tails to be removed from the its baize bag as a prelude to punishment.

Shake a leg - when sailors were allowed "wives" on board it was hard to tell what sex was in what bunk. At reveille, to shake a leg allowed the bosun to only drag the men onto watch, and let the women sleep.

Son of a Gun - Women experiencing difficulty during child birth were laid next to a cannon, which was fired - in the belief that the noise and shock would be enough to hasten the birth

Piping Hot - when meals were served the Bosun would pipe the arrival of the food to let the crew know it was meal time. The food was hot when it was piped, but soon got cold if you were not fast enough.

Hunky Dori - coined from a street of ill repute in Yokohama called Honki-Dori. The streets name became synonymous with anything pleasurable.

The Friday Superstition - In Britain, the reluctance of seaman to have anything to do with Friday was out of hand. To fix this, they laid the keel of a new vessel on a Friday, launched her on a Friday, named her HMS Friday, placed her under the command of Captain Friday and sent her to sea on a Friday. Neither ship, nor crew were ever heard from again !

Cold enough to freeze the balls of a brass monkey - Cannon balls were stacked up, ready to use in piles, and to stop the piles falling over they were stacked in a "monkey", a frame that contained the bottom layer of balls. When it got cold, the iron balls contracted at a different rate to the monkey (typically made of brass) and the stack would collapse - hence the phrase. Thought to be more based in traditional exaggeration rather than engineering fact.

For a few more phrases, follow the link.

" I was Born "

" Return to Pelican Bay"

" Get a better one"

Billy Bragg and Wilco

Alison Brown Quartet

Chris Smither

Brett has seen "quite many" cuttlefish - as if they are having a late breeding season. The water temperature is heading south - down to 16 C already. Fishermans Beach is looking good. If you are running or riding around Mornington on Sundays, watch out for him parked in the cycle lanes.