FathomOz

ORIGINAL TEAM

Gareth Powell (Publisher), John H Harding (Editor),

Roy Bisson (Art Director) and Dr Richard Ibara (USA).

Click ABOUT for background as to how it  began.

Underwater models of today might enjoy researching the films of Esther Williams.  Hollywood movies based around synchronized pool swimming were big in the 1950′s and no expense was spared in their production.  Esther was the queen of the era.

I spotted this poster at a town west of Townsville, Queensland called Ravenswood.   It was 1978 so the poster is unlikely to be still on display.

Gina Taylor (pictured) and I did presented our underwater film show in the local hall that night, just for fun.   The roll-up was surprisingly good for a ‘ghost town’, formerly a gold mining boom town.

A pair of hotels remained open, otherwise it’s worth a visit to see the main street with old shops with wooden footpaths, just like a Hollywood western movie.

http://thejohnharding.com

The original blog is now running again.  We had to switch from the  Greymatter to the WordPress system – when it began upsetting other websites at our domain hosting.   For 12 months it just sat there, ‘frozen’.

The original pictures are tiny in comparison to what is possible now. A lot of editing is still required.

Taiwan pictures have a new home of their own.

From a video clip posted on YouTube during a recent visit to Taipei.

The herbal medicine street there is Dihua Street.   Shark fins, canned and dried abalone and many items we rarely see in Australia,  on sale from hundreds of small shops that are unique in Asia with Japanese era architecture.

Perhaps the most innovative product of all is dried jellyfish.

It’s not so cheap either.  (Australians regard dried seaweed as being an unusual, so jellyfish is very different)!

We can only wonder if those Asian masters of turning almost every form of sea creature into something edible could tackle making a food product from, say,  Acanthaster planci, the crown-of-thorns starfish?

That would be a challenge.

The spines have a unique poison that is very painful.  Most sea creatures leave the starfish alone. Exceptions being triton trumpet shells and  hump head maori wrasse.

There is a possibility coral trout eat juvenile crown-of-thorns.

Less coral trout = more starfish in an area.  That theory is still to be researched.

Divers visited the shipwreck site, just off the entrance to Sydney Harbour and under the cliffs of Dover Heights back in 1955 and regularly afterwards.  The coins shown above are part of Gillies Gold – the collection recovered by John Gillies over many years working the site.

Holes drilled in the coins suggest these were being worn by some of the 121 persons who drowned in 1857 during a cold winter morning. The ship arrived at Sydney during fog and heavy seas to be wrecked after a long voyage from England.

A disaster so close to their destination after months at sea.

Pictured above is Wally Gibbins – a salvage diver known for his work on Solomon Island wartime ship wrecks, especially a submarine he blew apart using depth charge and live torpedo’s.  Nobody was injured onshore despite slanderous rumors to the contrary.

A large chunk of metal fell through the roof of a native hut where it remains today, used as a table.

Also a champion with spear fishing and shark hunting exploits during the pioneering era of Australian diving.

After years of drought there was rain all along the east coast of Australia.  The sharks that were thought to be on the brink of extinction suddenly came back by the hundred.  The link between rainfall and sea life has not been studied, to my knowledge, at least not with shark populations.

Try counting the Grey nurse in this picture.  I think there could be 21.

Comment via Facebook:

“I believe that the Grey nurse is not a threatened shark, there are still many congregations of the sharks that the so called know alls don’t know about, certainly in the area where I live.  (North coast of New South Wales).

I have even seen a 7ft 6″ one that was caught in the lower section of the Clarence River and one that was caught in a trawler’s net just north of Yamba NSW on sand.

There are many places along the NSW coast that have not been dived on and would most certainly support the Grey Nurse shark. This is my beleif and I stand to be correct.  I have swam and dived in the ocean for the last 40 years.  Geoff ‘Boots’ Towner 2 July 2010

Both pictures show the same shark – a medium sized giant.  1995.

Just off the beach there is a reef that is sometimes exposed, other times covered in sand.  A couple of pictures from 1981.

A few minutes before this picture was taken at a remote spot on Fraser Island, I thought this wild Australian dog was going to give me trouble.  After it was able to smell my scent it settled down and was becoming ‘playful’ when this picture was recorded.

A few months later a young child was killed by a dingo at this same location.  This led to a culling and many poor dogs were killed by park rangers under government  orders.

The northern Fraser Island dingo’s are a pure strain obviously isolated from the mainland breed.  This good-looking dog is a fine example.

Not many people had seen a whale underwater in Australia when this picture was taken, 1st September 1967.  At the time few folk appreciated what a whale was.  They were an unknown species almost on the brink of extinction – at least this species was.

Actors John Bonney, Janet Kingsbury (Contrabandits, ABC TV) and I had called into the bar at the then quaint Wooli Bowling Club for a pre dinner ale or two.

At the time Wooli was an fishing outpost on the mid north coast of New South Wales.

Ron and Valerie  Taylor were preparing dinner at the beach cabin we’d rented for a few days.

John got talking with a fisherman at the crowded bar.  It was Keith Knox – a pleasant and hard working fisherman with both front teeth missing.  Keith had ‘a strange creature caught in the ropes of his fish trap’.   He had no idea what it was.  Just a ‘monster of a thing.

John Bonney and I agreed to have a look and see what might be done.  We’d follow Keith in our boat the next morning.

It turned out to be this huge and very rare Green Sawfish, about five meters long in total.

The saw fish had wrapped itself in the tough nylon fish trap rope down near the bottom, 33 meters deep.

Back on the beach at MinnewaterValerie Taylor posed with my spear gun for this picture.