It rained a lot today, on Great Keppel Island.   I was nevertheless determined to walk around to Shelving Beach reef for the low tide.  I am so glad that I did.

I had the reef entirely to myself – except for all the fishes.

I was rather alarmed at all the algae.  Not the good micro algae, the zooxanthellae, that live in the polyps of healthy corals.   Rather, much of this reef was being lost to the macro algae that come after coral bleaching, smothering the corals.

My wide-angle photographs of this reef from today show algae smoothing hard corals.

Except when I got past the rock cod, and beyond the clam, I could see there was actually a lot of new growth, and everything else.

I especially liked seeing all the solitary corals, the Fungia species, apparently unaffected by the macro algae all about.

When some boys came scrambling over the rocks from Fisherman’s Beach I got out of the water and asked them if we could have a photograph together.

And then it was time to go back over the ridge, and I managed a selfie.