Geelong And Surrounds

Balmain Bug At Rippleside Pier

May 5, 2022 by Jade Craven

We were at the boat ramp at St Helens beach. We were freezing our buttocks off and weren’t having much luck finding any interesting critters.

Seth and I decided we’d quickly check out the shallow waters along the Rippleside Beach part of the carpark. We were so lucky we did!

We found this interesting Balmain Bug in water. Seth was able to catch it in his net and put it in a bucket. We were able to get a good look at the top and underside before putting it back in the water. It’s such a fascinating species. Seth is really good at finding marine life.

St Helens: Under The Harbour

January 3, 2022 by Jade Craven

Our First Attempt At Fungi Spore Prints

July 2, 2021 by Jade Craven

I love fungi. Most times I upload my nature photos to Flickr and just share them on the blog. On my last trip to the property, I was that impressed with the diversity of fungi that I shared some of them on my personal Instagram page.

A friend commented, sharing the Instagram page of The Spore Print Collective. I was fascinated and instantly showed mum. We looked at a couple of YouTube videos to learn how we could do similar.

I was getting ready to go home the next day when I noticed these fungi growing in mums backyard. Mum, Seth and I quickly found some paper to use (from scrapbooking) and carefully put the fungi on the paper in the spare room.

Nothing happened for days and we assumed that we had failed. This would have been understandable considering we didn’t really know what we were doing. Mum sent me these photos four days later. We are guessing that the room we had them in was too cold/damp, and that it needed to be drier for the spores to actually drop.

We will definitely be doing more experiments to learn as much as we can and hopefully create some art :).

Washed Up Jellyfish Along Eastern Beach

July 26, 2018 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

Yesterday, Seth and I went to Eastern Beach. We’d had two separate periods of windy weather in the past 2 weeks – which coincided with the days that Sethy and I went to test out the Gopro. Both times we had gone to the beach on sunny days following these storms.

There was a lot of Jellyfish both times. The first had about 30 dead bodies scattered along the beach leading up to the promenade. Yesterday, though, there were hundreds. You could also see many more floating in the water nearby in some sections.

I have no idea why they died, although I suspect the stormy weather was related. I thought it was noteworthy and tried to photograph any different species that I saw.

Experimenting With The Gopro At Eastern Beach

July 18, 2018 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

On the weekend, Seth and I went to Eastern Beach to test out the Gopro. We had started at Rippleside, because often you can get interesting creatures along that walk, but the conditions weren’t right. We did see some crabs near Rippleside and had fun with them, but I was wanting to experiment on other sea life.]

Eastern beach itself was a bit of a letdown. Partially because it was getting later in the afternoon, but I suspect the time of year had something to do with it. We were lucky enough to see, and film, a jellyfish but couldn’t find much other sea life swimming. Previously we have found fish and stingrays.

Instead, I let Seth put the Gopro under the promenade himself. We couldn’t see the footage until we got home, which was annoying, but was surprised at the variety of sealife that had made homes on the wooden and metal supports around the walkway. I haven’t tried to identify anything, as uni takes up a lot of my free time. However, I thought it was worth documenting regardless. Looking forward to experimenting more with the camera before the really hot weather hits.