Wonders of the bays

Port Phillip Bay and Western Port are home to a wildly diverse, colourful and fascinating marine wonderland. In this section, we've picked some of our favourite stories which we've discovered on our journey to understanding the bays.

From a creepy crawly army of crustaceans, to male baby bumps and sex-changing fish, our bays really are a treasure trove. But you mustn’t miss the collection of photos that capture gently swaying seaweed, nursing a multitude of fish and hedged by corals, hydroids and ascidians.

Above the water there’s a rich natural heritage of migratory birds, and those that stay closer to home all year around. The birds and their habitat are so special, that the area is recognised internationally under the Ramsar Convention.

Each winter, an army of spiders crabs migrate to Rye Pier to shed their shells. 

The sea floor is transformed into a underwater scene from a film like 'Lord of the Rings', strange, mythical type creatures bearing down in a parade predators overwhelmed by their sheer size in numbers. In fact marine scientists, can only conclude that this is the reason the crabs moult in such huge quantities; their flesh is quite vulnerable to predators until their new shells harden.

Seadragons are commonly found around rocky reefs and piers surrounded by protective seaweed.

It has marine scientists stumped as to how but procreation between a female and male seadragon involves the female transferring her eggs on to the underside of the male's tail, where he will incubate the them until they are ready for birth. When the baby seadragons are ready to be born, the male's tail will twitch, and twitch again, and then suddenly his babies will burst out into the current.

*Update - on Thursday, 24 August 2017, ABC Online reported that photographer and keen diver, Pang Quong, caught a female weedy seadragon transferring her eggs to a male. It's believed that this is the first time ever that the process has been witnessed by humans.

We talk about climate change a lot throughout this website. So you'll either already or will soon will be accustomed to the idea that environments move and change ... incrementally and measured in millions of years through pre-history and then at the far more rapid pace of which we're seeing now.

One aspect of this change, is spotting species never before seen in the bays' waters. Citizen scientists were some of the first to discover the western blue groper taking residence in the bays.

The western blue groper are fascinating, gentle giants of the seas and can grow up to 175 cm. They start life as female and change sex when they reach about 30-35 years old ... that's right, they also live to a ripe old age to boot, up to 70 years of age.