Hi divers,

It has been a long time between posts, but over the past year we have entered another active phase of the long term community Dragon Search South Australia project. Thanks so much to the 60 divers who have posted their records to the project. Every record counts, and is utilised in some way. We are now analysing around 6,000 leafy seadragon records from SA, using a suite of 40 visual markers. Records date between 2011 and 2023, but available photos prior to 2011 are currently too sporadic and few for analysis. This current phase of analysis builds on the initial 2013-2018 results from Rapid Bay, but also now includes seadragon populations from Second Valley, Edithburgh and several other locations, and larger suite of ID markers. Many of the recent records are on this Dragon Search South Australia project page on iNaturalist, and these plus previous records are also being migrated to a searchable visual database, maintained by citizen science project members in SA and QLD. This long-term, community-based project is supported periodically by small grants from the Landscape Boards, and will remain independent in SA as a continuing project in citizen science.

There are clear benefits in collating and analysing leafy seadragon photos over a long period (13 years so far for Dragon Search SA), and the project is starting to produce some extraordinary results now. Examples include long term term male brood buddies (observed together for almost a decade), long term site association, migration to another habitat and then return to the inshore location, migration away by some young seadragons with no return, double broods per season, regrowth of leaves, and a lot else. An article on some of our long term project results is due for release this week, and and I will post the URL here. A more detailed, peer-reviewed report on the techniques and the results is in progress. The results include IDs that have been agreed upon by 3 trained people (myself included) independently analysing the same sets of images.

Thanks again to all divers - locals and visitors alike - who use their time, effort, skill, equipment and other resources to find and photograph seadragons in SA. Your images are highly valued by Dragon Search South Australia, and provide very important insight into the complex life history of these unique little fishes.