As regular readers would already know, the Coorong is one of our favourite places.
This series is the fruit of our most recent visit, on 13 March 2024.
In the wake of the 2022-23 floods – which produced the Murray-Darling river system’s biggest flows in many years – the Coorong was enjoying better overall “”health” than had been the case over the preceding several decades.
Most tourist visitors enter the Coorong via the Goolwa Barrage, where this series begins.
In recent times, anyone who visits the Goolwa Barrage – most especially those who pass through it – is sure to enjoy a close encounter with what many people still call “New Zealand” fur seals.
They are not in fact immigrants from NZ, and Arctocephalus forsteri should not be saddled with a misleading name.
The “preferred”, descriptive name: long-nosed fur seals.
A lot of nonsense and misinformation has been spoken and written about them – in general, and specifically in relation to the alleged “threat” they pose to the Coorong.
Click here for a Q & A which demolishes most of the misinformation; there is no rational reason to regard long-nosed fur seals as a major “problem”, nor as “invaders”.
See also this May 2022 Pelican Yoga post
(photo copyright Doug Spencer, taken whilst passing through the Goolwa Barrage lock at 10.16 am on 13 March 2024)
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