Main Club 13 Feb 2022

This event is rapidly becoming an annual favourite of mine. At 8.30 am on Sunday the 13th, we expected lovely weather for our visit to the Omeo wreck in Coogee. OK, Darwin Day was officially the day before, but that didn’t seem to be a problem.

I googled for some information on this popular site. In summary, the Omeo wreck is located very close to the shore at Coogee Beach, mostly submerged and covered with marine growth. Anybody interested in the maritime history of the shipwreck can navigate to the WA Museum website (museum.wa.gov.au/maritime-archaeology-db/wrecks/omeo) as it has some interesting information.

It was apparent that due to the COVID travelling restrictions, many more people now visit the wreck for snorkelling and swimming. Nearby car parking bays were almost not to be found, and in the water, if you didn’t watch out, you’d bump into other people enjoying a swim or a snorkel. The City of Cockburn also voiced concerns online that many people, whilst enjoying the site, “stand on the wreck, causing damage to the fragile steel hull while also harming the marine habitat and the sea life it supports.”

Despite the exceedingly crowded location, with 14 Club members and two visitors turning up, I had a great time. We all brought our snorkelling gear, and we had several underwater cameras with us. We snorkelled for about an hour, and I didn’t see many of my fellow naturalists as my eyes were mostly drawn to the marine growth and fish. We regrouped to recount what we had observed. First, we named all the fish. The most observed were the schools of Western Striped Grunter (Pelates octolineatus) feeding on algae on the wreck, the Convict Fish or Stripey (Microcanthus strigatus) and the Weeping Toadfish (Torquigener pleurogramma) doing their own thing and not being spooked by me diving close.

We also saw Red-lipped and Western Crested (Magpie) Morwong, Old Wife, Black-throated Threefin, Shaw’s Cowfish, a Masked Stingaree, a Star Octopus, Fanbelly Leatherjacket, Banded Sweep, Germaine’s Blenny, Tarwine, and schools of Australian Herring, Western Pomfret and Rough Bullseye. Five of the observed fish species are endemic to WA, and two are native to Australia. If you are familiar with iNaturalist, you can look up the observations made at Omeo Wreck over the years by different people.

We also saw Padina elegans, distinctive brown algae with lovely rings, Posidonia seagrass, sea urchins, barnacles, various ascidians, including sea tulips and other ‘coral’. To me, it seemed that the algae covering the wreck has drastically increased. At the end of the snorkel session, the water was getting rather stirred up with sand due to the increasing number of people in the water, which made getting any details of the different marine growth near impossible. It was time to end this excursion with a much needed hot drink before heading our separate ways home. A delightful morning.

Jolanda Keeble