Marine Life of Long Reef
Preserving Diversity: Long Reef's Vital Marine Habitat
Long Reef, situated along Sydney's Northern Beaches, boasts a vibrant marine ecosystem teeming with diverse life forms.
This coastal stretch is a haven for an array of marine species, including vibrant fish like surgeonfish and wrasse, alongside intriguing invertebrates such as anemones, sea stars, and crabs. The rocky reefs are adorned with Neptune's Necklace and other seaweeds, offering refuge to countless juvenile crustaceans and mollusks.
Ongoing conservation efforts led by local initiatives like Reefcare are crucial in safeguarding this marine paradise, ensuring its resilience amidst environmental challenges and preserving its beauty for future generations to appreciate and explore.
Sea Urchins
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Sea Urchins are usually spherical with a flattened top and bottom. They have close-fitting plates covered with a delicate living skin. The plates bear movable spines. The animal walks with retractable tube feet. The suckers on the tube feet help the animal turn over and hold onto rocks during heavy wave action, providing stability and protection.
Sea Stars
Scientific name: Asteroidea
Fun fact: X
Sea Stars (often mistakenly called ‘star fish’) come in various shapes and sizes, blending superbly into their surroundings for camouflage. Common on our temperate coast, they graze on seaweed and opportunistically feed on decaying organisms, protruding their stomachs to digest food externally, thus ensuring their survival strategy.
Octopuses
Scientific name: Octopoda
Fun fact: X
Octopuses are highly intelligent predatory mollusks, among the largest and most complex invertebrates. They expand a muscular sac to draw in and expel water through a tubular siphon for propulsion. With eight sucker-bearing arms, they feed on crabs, lobsters, mollusks, bivalves, and snails. The venomous bite of the Blue-Ringed Octopus can be fatal to humans.
Turban Snails
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Turban Snails are vegetarian grazers of large seaweed and inhabit the mid to lower regions of the rock platform. The shape of the shell is reminiscent of a turban head dress. Turban shells close their opercula (trapdoor) when threatened by a predator. When people find these trapdoors they often don’t realise they were the front door of a much larger animal.
Wobbegong
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Wobbegongs, carpet sharks found around Sydney's rocky shoreline, are commonly sighted by divers at depths exceeding 5 meters. They frequent dive sites like 'The Cathedral' and 'The Apartments' along Long Reef's shelf drop-off, often blending seamlessly into their surroundings. These sharks significantly enrich Sydney's coastal marine life diversity.
Worms
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Worms spend most of their time under the sand, with only their head occasionally protruding to forage. They are carnivores, using strong horny jaws to catch prey. Giant beach worms, reaching up to 2.5 meters in length, are relatively common but seldom seen as they live completely hidden in the sand where the surf breaks, deepening the mystery of their habitat.
Sponges
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Sponges are the simplest multicellular animals, lacking tissues and organs but composed of various cell types forming their structure. Spicules of lime or silica hold them together. Water enters through numerous pores, circulates, and exits through larger openings. Sponge cells filter seawater for nutrients, sustaining their unique biological processes.
Crabs
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Rocky shore crabs feed within hard substrates, acting as opportunistic scavengers consuming various organisms. They use strong, plier-like claws to crush prey, including small snails and limpets, and to transport food to their mouths. Crabs are highly alert to nearby movements and vibrations, crucial for survival in dynamic coastal environments.
Elephant Snails
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Elephant Snails are usually found in pools, crevices or under large stones. The soft black parts of this snail and the white simple shell, which looks like a shield, make it easy to identity. Elephant snails are members of the limpet family, although the shell is smaller than most limpets. The shell is often covered by the black mantle.
Sea Dragon
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Sea dragons, native to Australia's southern and western coasts, are known for their exquisite camouflage resembling drifting seaweed. Belonging to the Syngnathidae family, akin to seahorses, they boast slender bodies adorned with leaf-like appendages for superb camouflage. Conservation efforts are crucial to safeguard these marine creatures.
Algae
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Algae, simpler than the simplest land plants (mosses), often consist of a single cell. Seaweeds, being multi-cellular algae, lack roots and obtain nutrients directly from seawater through photosynthesis in sunlight. They attach to rocks with a 'holdfast', and if detached, they cannot reattach themselves permanently to substrates.
Pipis and mussels
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Cockles, Pipis (pictured), and Mussels are bivalve molluscs. Mussels attach to rocks via threads protruding from the shell, while Cockles and Pipis live freely in sandy and muddy areas. Numerous mollusc species inhabit these NSW areas, with the Pipi particularly well-known. It burrows into the sand using its muscular foot to disappear beneath the surface.
Flatworms
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Flatworms are flat, leaf-shaped, thin, flexible, and almost transparent. They glide over rocks and swim gracefully by undulating like stingrays. Carnivorous, they eat dead animals or capture small invertebrates alive by wrapping themselves around prey and entangling it in slime, with the mouth located centrally on the underside of the body.
Neptune’s Necklace
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Neptune’s Necklace thrives in rock pools and on intertidal rock surfaces, its fronds filled with air for buoyancy. Yellow spots mark reproductive cells, providing shelter for numerous juvenile crustaceans and molluscs beneath its fronds, crucial for coastal ecosystem diversity, supporting various marine life and maintaining ecosystem health.
Nudibranches
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Nudibranches belong to the same family as octopuses and snails. They possess sensory tentacles at the front and a cluster of retractable gill plumes at the rear, often vibrant in color. Many nudibranches are carnivorous, feeding on sponges and sea anemones, while some consume seaweed, contributing to marine biodiversity.
Black Nerites
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Black Nerites are Some of the most numerous and easily identified shells of our rocky shores. These snails, a glistening black when wet, are usually found in crevices, rock Pools or under rocks during low tide except when the weather is cool or raining. When the tide rises to cover them, they move around the shore to feed, leaving ‘snail trails’.
Blue Periwinkles
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Blue Periwinkles are very small blue- grey shells that feed on microscopic algae invisible to the naked eye. They live at the upper drier levels of the platform and are able to survive a long time out of water. At low tide they are often found huddled together in cracks and crevices. They follow each other and recognise and respond to familiar surroundings.
Barnacles
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Barnacles, crustaceans closely related to prawns, drift as larvae in the ocean before cementing themselves firmly to rocks upon reaching shore. They construct their limy homes and use their hairy feet to gather food particles when submerged, effectively becoming stationary filter-feeders. Their lifecycle involves several molts to reach adulthood.
Chitons
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Chitons are ancient moiluses with eight shell plates and a broad foot which allows them to hold on very tightly to the surface of the rocks. Chitons are algal feeders, feeding on both microscopic and larger plants.
Abalone
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Abalone shells are characterised by their ear-like appearance. They are nocturnal and at night move about, rasping algae off the rocks with a powerful ‘tongue’ or radula. Water is drawn in under the front of the shell, passed over the gills and then pumped out a series of holes on the edge of the shell.
Crowies
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
For centuries, people have used Cowries as currency and for decoration. Although mainly tropical, they are often found locally. The Cowries’ distinctive smoothly polished sheil is achieved by its mantle flaps, which unlike most snails, usually cover the outside of the shell. The mantle is covered in sensory tentacles.
Limpets
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Limpets have a shell like a conical cap. They move slowly across the rocks, grazing on microscopic algae or larger seaweeds. Some limpets return to their ‘home’ base, a circular scar on the rocks, after feeding. Limpets and chitons use the suction pressure from their very large foot to hold onto the rock surface.
Galeolaria
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Galeolaria are filter-feeding worms that live in densely packed calcareous tubes. The worms stay permanently in these tubes, eating the nutrient particles from the water around them. Their black feeding tentacles pop out when covered with water. Commonly incorrectly called ‘Sydney Coral’, Galeolaria is a worm living in a shell casing, not a coral.
Sea Hare
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
The Sea Hare is a regular visitor to our shores during spring and early summer. The clue to its name is provided by four tentacles on the head which have folds resembling a rabbit’s ear. This unusual member of the mollusc family lays large quantities of yellow egg-strings. It is frequently found in rock pools and feeds on sea lettuce or Ulva.
Sea Anemones
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Sea Anemones are ‘sit and wait’ predators. They are tubular, jelly-like animals seemingly attached to one spot. They can move if conditions are uncomfortable. At the top is a mouth surrounded by tentacles covered in stinging cells that have tiny sticky threads inside. Prey is caught by sticky threads and paralysed by the stinging cells. The food is then drawn into the sea anemone’s mouth where it is digested with chemicals. Unwanted material is regurgitated. Sea anemones also eat nutrients by sifting fine particles in the water.
Zebra Trochids
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Zebra Trochids are amongst the commonest molluscs of our rocky shores. They are spiralled shells with alternate black and white stripes. The width and number of bands are determined by changing environmental factors. These snails feed on microscopic seaweed.
Turban Snails
Scientific name: Echinoidea
Fun fact: X
Turban Snails are vegetarian grazers of large seaweed and inhabit the mid to lower regions of the rock platform. The shape of the shell is reminiscent of a turban head dress. Turban shells close their opercula (trapdoor) when threatened by a predator. When people find these trapdoors they often don’t realise they were the front door of a much larger animal.