The ‘King Nep­tune and his marine friends’ sand sculp­ture were cre­ated by artist Tim Darby.

“When I was in grade one I drew a pic­ture of a witch’s cat in a storm. It was framed and hung in the staff room. Ever since then I’ve been draw­ing, paint­ing and cre­at­ing. I stud­ied sculp­ture and illus­tra­tion at Curtin Uni and had some work cho­sen for an exhi­bi­tion in the WA Young Artists Award.”

“I enjoy work­ing with raw mate­ri­als — steel, stone, wood etc and par­tic­u­larly like sculpt­ing in sand because it is fun, flex­i­ble, low tech and you can use the sand again! I also like the way peo­ple come by to watch the work pro­gress­ing. Peo­ple can relate to what you are doing. I sup­pose play­ing in the sand brings out the kid in all of us.”
Tim Darby

The sculp­ture took over 4 days to com­plete using more than 3 cubic metres of sand (or nearly 25,000,000,000 grains of sand!).

Next time you visit the beach why not have a go at sand sculp­tur­ing? By explor­ing your coastal envi­ron­ment and using nat­ural debris such as sea­weed, shells and cut­tle­bone you can really bring your sculp­ture to life!

Immerse your­self at the Nat­u­ral­iste Marine Dis­cov­ery Cen­tre (NMDC) and dis­cover our new Rein­car­nated Sea Sculp­ture now on dis­play. Designed by Calvin Chee and Miles Noel, this cre­ative art­work has been kindly donated to the NMDC by Scitech.

Inspired by the beauty that lies beneath the sur­face of our oceans, this exhibit por­trays a sea jelly, a fish and sea­weed made entirely from recy­cled plas­tic mate­ri­als. A total of 3,768 water and milk bot­tles have been used to con­struct this impres­sive sus­pended dis­play with a total weight of 150 kilo­grams. This is approx­i­mately equiv­a­lent to the weight of plas­tic pack­ag­ing used in West­ern Aus­tralia every two sec­onds. Over the period of a year this adds up to more than two mil­lion tonnes of plas­tic pack­ag­ing used in our state alone, pre­sent­ing a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on the amount of waste we pro­duce. The sculp­ture aims to encour­age the com­mu­nity to reduce, reuse and recy­cle, in order to shrink our eco­log­i­cal foot­print as well as high­light­ing the impor­tance of liv­ing sustainably.

Want to do your bit to bat­tle waste along our coast? Why not join us for the inau­gural NMDC Beach Clean Up on Sat­ur­day Octo­ber 15 and help clean up our local beaches. All par­tic­i­pants will receive a com­pli­men­tary sausage siz­zle, free entry into the NMDC, and the oppor­tu­nity to view the new sea sculp­ture display.

For more infor­ma­tion on the beach clean up activ­ity visit www.nmdc.com.au or call 9203 0339.

The Depart­ment of Fish­eries Com­mu­nity and Edu­ca­tion team oper­ates at the Nat­u­ral­iste Marine Dis­cov­ery Cen­tre (NMDC) and at many other loca­tions around the State such as Albany, Bus­sel­ton, Fre­man­tle, Gascoyne/Pilbara, Broome and the Indian Ocean Territories.

There is a large range of hands-on and fun learn­ing activ­i­ties that take you beneath the sur­face of our watery envi­ron­ment and behind the scenes of aquatic sci­ence as it unfolds. The edu­ca­tion activ­i­ties that are devel­oped and imple­mented by our edu­ca­tion staff come under three main themes, which are:

• Aquatic ecol­ogy & biology
• Sci­ence behind aquatic management
• Peo­ple & communities

Our learn­ing pro­grams are based on cur­rent sci­ence and data gen­er­ated by sci­en­tific research and can be fully inte­grated into both the West­ern Aus­tralian Cur­ricu­lum Frame­work and the Aus­tralian Cur­ricu­lum. We are always devel­op­ing new edu­ca­tion activ­i­ties that add value to school teaching-learning programs.

For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.nmdc.com.au

With the warmer weather soon to be upon us, you’ll be drop­ping a fish­ing line in the water for sure!  A new addi­tion to Marine WATERs for Term 4 is the Fish­ing for the Future les­son plan.   In work­ing through the activ­i­ties in this les­son plan, stu­dents will explore the man­age­ment of recre­ational fish­eries in West­ern Aus­tralia.  They will also learn to inter­pret fish­ing rules and reg­u­la­tions using the Recre­ational Fish­ing Guides and Species Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Guides (avail­able from your local Depart­ment of Fish­eries office or at www.fish.wa.gov.au), spe­cific to the area they live in.  Visit http://marinewaters.fish.wa.gov.au to check out these excit­ing new resources.

The Depart­ment of Fish­eries Com­mu­nity and Edu­ca­tion team offer a hands-on activ­ity to com­pli­ment the Fish­ing for the Future les­son plan. The activ­ity, called Fish­ing for Sus­tain­abil­ity, is a vir­tual fish­ing expe­ri­ence for stu­dents.  Check out www.nmdc.com.au/excursions/fishing-for-sustainability/ to find out more about this activity.

If you do hap­pen to drop a line in the water these hol­i­days or in the upcom­ing warmer months, don’t for­get to Send Us Your Skele­tons! The Department’s Research Divi­sion wants your fish frames (skele­tons with the heads and guts intact) to assist with the ongo­ing mon­i­tor­ing of our dem­er­sal (bottom-dwelling) and nearshore fish resources.  Visit the Depart­ment of Fish­eries web­site, www.fish.wa.gov.au/frames, to find out more.

Our Octo­ber school hol­i­day pro­gram is now avail­able. Con­tact the NMDC to secure your place!

A Year with the Ocean

Date & Time: Mon­day 3 Octo­ber – Fri­day 14 Octo­ber (excludes week­ends), 10:30am to 12 noon.

Cost: $4, all ages. Cost does NOT include entry to the NMDC.

Spend a year under the ocean, when you design and cre­ate your own marine-themed cal­en­dar for 2012. This do-it-yourself activ­ity runs week­days dur­ing the Octo­ber school hol­i­days. Book­ings are not required for this activity.

Clean Marine

Date & Time: Sat­ur­day 15 Octo­ber, starts at 9.30am at the NMDC.

Cost: Free, all ages; fam­i­lies welcome.

Get the fam­ily together and help pro­tect our marine envi­ron­ment these school hol­i­days. Join us for the inau­gural NMDC Beach Clean Up! Stay for a sausage siz­zle and explore the Nat­u­ral­iste Marine Dis­cov­ery Cen­tre. Reg­is­tra­tions essential.

Book­ings are essen­tial for our school hol­i­day activ­i­ties so please call 9203 0339 to reserve your place. Cost includes entry into the NMDC (exclud­ing A Year with the Ocean).

The red crab, Gecar­coidea natalis, is a ter­res­trial (land) species of crab found almost exclu­sively on Christ­mas Island in the Indian Ocean. The only other pop­u­la­tion of red crab is found on the Cocos (Keel­ing) Islands about 2,950km north-west of Perth.
This iconic species is one of four­teen species of land crab found on Christ­mas Island. Like other crus­taceans, red crabs belong to a group of ani­mals called arthro­pods, mean­ing ‘joint-legged’. This slow grow­ing species only moult once a year, with males gen­er­ally larger than females. An adult cara­pace (shell) can mea­sure any where up to 116 mm across, although sex­ual matu­rity is reached at around 40 mm across (four to five years of age).

Red crabs spend the major­ity of the year liv­ing in soli­tary bur­rows among the Island’s rain­for­est, for­ag­ing on fallen leaves, fruits, flow­ers and seedlings.

How­ever, they are not solely veg­e­tar­ian and if given the oppor­tu­nity will feast on other dead crabs, birds and the intro­duced giant African snail. With their large num­bers, the crabs dom­i­nate the for­est floor so there is lit­tle com­pe­ti­tion for food and other resources. Although the for­est is their pre­ferred envi­ron­ment, they can also be found liv­ing in a vari­ety of habi­tats, includ­ing coastal shore ter­races and domes­tic gardens.

Out­side of the breed­ing sea­son, red crabs are a soli­tary species. They have dis­tinct pat­terns of activ­ity at the begin­ning of the wet sea­son (October-November), per­form­ing one of the most spec­tac­u­lar breed­ing migra­tions seen on earth. Mil­lions of bright red crabs emerge from their bur­rows and make their way down to the coast where they breed and spawn their eggs. Upon arriv­ing at the shore, male crabs cre­ate mat­ing bur­rows, where the females can rest and incu­bate their eggs. Amaz­ingly, one female crab can brood up to 100,000 eggs in a sin­gle sea­son! After around 14 days the eggs are released into the water and the crabs start their long jour­ney back up into the rainforests.