A great find at Narooma for the Marine Society

At the latest Marine Society outing to the Narooma Boardwalk last Sunday, we were expecting good things to be found as we have been delighted with previous year's explorations here. Georgia and Jon Poyner were the snorkel searchers for the group and kept coming in with different and interesting finds.

There were several tropical urchins - so called "sea Lamingtons", not normally seen south of Sydney.

However the star of the show has to be the beautiful jellyfish that Georgia brought back. Micheal McMaster, who was leading this shore search, said he knew he had never seen its like before. He brought it back to Merimbula Wharf Aquarium and after photographing it, asked his museum contacts if they could help to identify it. It was identified as cephea cephea  by the Australian Museum who asked to have the jellyfish as it was a rare sighting. Last recorded sighting was in Northern Queensland in 1924, it is generally only found in tropical waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

The urchin expert has asked that we keep a look out and record any other strange species as he is most interested in how species are changing their ranges these days. Gretta Petchl has asked that Georgia adds the jellyfish to Redmap as it is a most unusual sighting - very beautiful too!