Category: Australia (not WA)

A wider view reveals what the Coorong’s north lagoon looks like in “boom time”..and a future post’s even-wider view will really show just how prodigiously abundant was birdlife in autumn 2024.

(Photo ©️ Doug Spencer, taken at 12.55 pm on 13 March 2024 – less than one minute after the previous post’s featured image)

The Coorong has long been a very dynamic ecosystem – and a fragile one.

Three months after we witnessed such abundance in the north lagoon, the Coorong’s south lagoon suffered a huge fish kill; an estimated 200 stinking tonnes of dead fish were rotting.

Locals said it was the largest such event in more than forty years.

The (constantly-shifting) mouth of the Murray-Darling river system is also the Coorong’s mouth.

If the Murray is “roaring”, its “fresh” water “flushes” the Coorong – Australia’s longest lagoon; if it is not “roaring”, the combined forces of incoming ocean water and evaporation of the lagoon’s water make the Coorong progressively more saline.

The Coorong’s southern lagoon – a long way south of the Murray – is usually hypersaline.

This post’s photos were both taken from the Coorong’s northern part, looking at the Pullen Spit, and across it to the Southern Ocean.

In effect, the Pullen Spit is the northern bank of the Murray’s mouth.