Rottnest Island

Rottnest Island – Feathers Fins & Megafauna

Known as Wadjemup to the Noongar people, Rottnest Island is 18 km offshore from Perth, Western Australia’s capital city.  Wayne and Pam have spent two decades photographing wildlife on, around and under the waters of this Class A Nature Reserve. 

This book includes over 400 colour plates from Rottnest’s bird life, marine life and visiting whales. Rottnest’s 19 square kilometres are circumscribed with an intricate and navigationally challenging fringing coral reef that was laid down 100,000 years ago. These reefs are host to a unique blend of temperate and tropical marine species. Temperate due to the southern latitude of 32 degrees and tropical due to the southern flow of warmer water from the Leeuwin Current - bringing with it larvae of corals and fish. 

Events of 2020 have driven a greater appreciation and cherishing of what’s closer to home. For much of our diving in recent years, we had been seduced by the 28-30 degree Celsius waters of the coral triangle. A re-appreciation of Rottnest’s underwater charms has emerged. Interestingly, a number of species we have photographed at 6 degrees south are present at 32 degrees south. 

Human occupation perhaps extends back 50,000 years but ceased when sea levels rose separating the island from the mainland 7,000 years ago. Wadjemup translates as ‘place across the water where the spirits are’.

The Dutch visited in 1658 and again in 1696 when Captain Willem de Vlamingh spent 6 days exploring and named the island ‘Rats Nest’ after an understandable misdiagnosis of the resident marsupial quokkas. 

The themes of this book are birds along the shoreline, marine life on the seagrass meadows and fringing reefs and the visiting megafauna. 

Pam and Wayne’s books have been downloaded in 37 countries.

 

Pam & Wayne Osborn 2023