Planula Divers Retreat, Byron Bay

The name of this most beautiful and fascinating creature is a bit confusing, since it is not a fish at all. The cuttlefish belongs to the Phylum Mollusca, Class Cephalopoda (literally: head-footers) and is closely related to the octopus and squid. Like squids, but unlike the octopus, the cuttlefish has ten arms. Two of those [...]

Sea turtles are reptiles whose ancestors evolved on land and returned to the sea to live about 150 million years ago. Green turtles have an oval or heartshaped carapace, which is part of their skeleton. They are not able to retract back into their shell like some of their terrestrial cousins can. The green turtle [...]

One animal that every diver will have encountered, because they don’t hide or swim away and are mostly brightly coloured: the sponge. Sponges are single or colonial animals which body bears many pores. Hence the name of its Phylum: Porifera (Latin porus, “pore”; ferre, “to bear”). This phylum contains the most primitive multicellular organisms [...]

Aquaculture is the cultivation of marine or freshwater animals and plants, in a confined and more or less controlled environment. The final products are mostly used for commercial purposes. Fish, molluscs, crustaceans and seaweed are being cultivated and grown in cages, nets or ponds in coastal waters, estuaries, mangroves, dams and other waterways. For centuries [...]