Wyargine Aquatic Reserve

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Wyargine Aquatic Reserve

Community-led conservation for the creation of Wyargine Aquatic Reserve in Middle Harbour, Sydney.

06/10/2026

Can you believe these beautiful creatures live at Balmoral? 🪸

The next photos in our special series about intertidal zones from brilliant local photographer t_steggall 🩵

These are speckled rock anemones in the rock pools at Balmoral beach - they live in intertidal zones and often nestle in rock crevices. These areas are crucial for marine breeding and feeding.

We’re working to have some of the waters from Chinamans Beach to Balmoral Beach protected as a marine aquatic reserve to help protect our marine life this. You can help by signing our petition 💪🏽 visit the link in our profile or head to https://www.change.org/p/help-establish-an-aquatic-reserve-at-balmoral-wyargine-aquatic-friends-inc

Thank you t_steggall for your amazing photos!!

04/10/2026

Look who was at Balmoral yesterday 🩵 aren’t we lucky.

Thank you Nicola Burdan for sharing your sighting with us!

30/09/2026

🪸 Sea hares! Aren’t they amazing. Have you ever seen sea hares like these?

The rock pools at Balmoral are home to all sorts of incredible sea life. These beautiful sea hares are making their way to shelter as the tide goes out. What a wonderful surprise to discover in our own intertidal zones!

We’re so excited to share a special series on the Balmoral and Chinamans Beach intertidal zones over the coming weeks, featuring stunning photographs captured by our wonderful local photographer t_steggall 📸🌊

Intertidal zones are incredibly important parts of marine ecosystems. They provide shelter, feeding areas and breeding grounds for an amazing diversity of marine life, while giving us a rare opportunity to see what lives beneath the surface.

They’re also fantastic places for kids and visitors of all ages to discover marine life up close and develop a deeper appreciation for the ocean and the importance of protecting it 🐚🦀🐟 When exploring rock pools, it’s important to look, but not touch. This helps protect delicate marine life and keeps both the animals and us safe.

We’re incredibly lucky that Wyargine, the proposed aquatic reserve, is home to such magnificent intertidal habitats, where creatures like these sea hares can thrive.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing more of Tracey’s beautiful images and introducing you to some of the remarkable creatures that call these waters home.

You can also help by recording your sightings on the iNaturalist app, just as Tracey has 🌱

Stay tuned. There’s so much to discover in our intertidal zones! 🌊💙

Photos by t_steggall

24/09/2026

Beautiful visitors to Edwards Beach at Balmoral this week 💗

Thank you Pascal Blanquer for sharing your photos and videos with us!

You can help the Wyargine mission by sharing your photos and videos of Balmoral and Chinamans with us too.

And add them to iNaturalist 🌱 because every sighting is helping us build a database of species at the proposed Wyargine Aquatic Reserve 🤗

22/09/2026

Thanks to everyone who got involved in Take 3 for the Sea’s Seaside Scavenge at Balmoral on the weekend 💪🏽

Every little bit of litter removed from our marine environment makes a big difference 🐬

16/09/2026

Join us for the Take 3 for the Sea Seaside Scavenge this Sunday to help clean up Balmoral Beach 💪🏽

We’re so pleased to see this activity as part of the Mosman Council Mayor Ann Marie Kimber Sustainability Fair 🌱

Every bit of support we can give our marine environment helps.

If you’d like to come along too, have a look at the Mosman Council website for all the details. See you there 🩵

09/09/2026

Different days, different rays 🖤🌊

Last week at Balmoral, we spotted two very different rays on different days. A magnificent big dark ray, and a smaller silver-coloured fiddler ray.

Rays are an important part of a healthy marine ecosystem. They help shape and turn over the seafloor as they feed, cycle nutrients and play an important role in the food web.

These sightings are a reminder of the incredible marine life living right here in our harbour, and why protecting it matters 🩵

You can help protect the waters from Chinamans Beach to Balmoral Beach. Share your photos and vision with us of what you see beneath the water when you’re swimming or snorkelling, and register your sightings on the iNaturalist app ✅

Your observations help build citizen science data and record the incredible variety of marine life in this area.

What have you seen beneath the surface? 🐟

Thank you Pascal Blanquer for your ongoing support by sharing your sightings with us!

27/08/2026

🦀 A blue swimmer crab spotted at the proposed Wyargine Aquatic Reserve by Pascal Blanquer.

From time to time, we’re lucky enough to see these beautiful crabs here. Blue swimmer crabs are culturally significant to First Nations people and are part of the rich marine life that has long been found along our coast.

But we should be seeing more of them.

The GAMAY RANGERS 🐋 have spoken about how culturally important seafood such as crabs has become harder to find over recent decades, and about the importance of healthy seagrass habitat for blue swimmer crabs and other marine species.

That’s one of the reasons we are so passionate about protecting this special place. We already see magnificent marine life here, and we know that when we give nature the protection and opportunity to recover, we can see even more of it return. 🌊🦀

Protecting and conserving the proposed Wyargine area from Chinamans Beach to Balmoral Beach is about making encounters like this possible and giving future generations the chance to experience them too 🩵

26/08/2026

🌊 We won the Ocean Hope Prize! 🌊

We’re incredibly proud to share that Wyargine Aquatic Friends has been awarded the Ocean Hope Prize as part of the 2026 Valerie Taylor Ocean Prizes.

Our prize includes $3,000 for our volunteer-run charity, along with 12 Wilderlab eDNA kits, kindly provided by Wilderlab NZ Ltd and the Minderoo Foundation 🩵

This means a lot to us 🐬

Wyargine Aquatic Friends is working to establish an Aquatic Reserve stretching from Chinamans Beach, around Wyargine Point and Rocky Point, to Balmoral - protecting an extraordinary part of Sydney Harbour and helping conserve and restore its marine biodiversity.

The waters here are home to a great variety of marine life, and our community is already seeing and documenting species including rays, turtles, dolphins, seals, octopus and fish. Building the evidence to demonstrate the ecological importance of this area is a vital part of our campaign.

The 12 eDNA kits will give our volunteer community another powerful way to document what lives beneath the surface. They’ll help us gather scientific evidence of the biodiversity in these waters and deepen our understanding of this special marine environment.

The $3,000 will go directly into our mission - helping our volunteers continue the work of community engagement, citizen science, education and advocacy needed to establish the Wyargine Aquatic Reserve.

For a volunteer-run organisation, support like this makes a real difference. It gives us more capacity to turn the passion and knowledge of our community into meaningful evidence and action for the future of Sydney Harbour.

We’re enormously grateful to Blue World for the Ocean Hope Prize, and to Wilderlab and the Minderoo Foundation for supporting the eDNA component of the award.

Most of all, thank you to everyone who has supported the Wyargine Aquatic Reserve so far. This is your ocean too. 💙

03/08/2026

Every observation counts 🌊🐠

Have you spotted a fish, stingray, sea slug, octopus, crab, seaweed or shorebird between Chinamans and Balmoral Beach?

Record your sighting on iNaturalist and help build the scientific evidence needed to protect the proposed Wyargine Aquatic Reserve.

Every observation adds to our understanding of this marine ecosystem and helps demonstrate why these waters deserve lasting protection.

📍 Record your sightings on iNaturalist and be part of the science making a difference 🩵

Address

29-33 The Esplanade
Sydney, NSW
2088

Website

https://www.wyargine.org.au/

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