bramble-cay-melomys-survey-report

een a bit rough” during the annual mackerel season, which runs for approximately six months over
the last half of each year (June or July to November or December). Mr Stewart also reflected that the
weather had worsened over the previous decade, in particular “getting rougher and rougher over the
last four or five years”. He recalled that in former times “there would be strong winds for a few days,
but then it would ease off, becoming calm for periods, but this doesn’t seem to happen recently”.
Instead, he said there were “big seas and 30 knot winds lasting for longer periods of ten days to three
weeks” and now “they practically live in wet weather gear”.
Anecdotes about unusual flotsam observed in the seas around Bramble Cay were provided. Mr
Moller-Nielsen recalled on one occasion taking his fishing boat to investigate what looked like a
vessel in distress, but found the object to be a large (6 m x 6 m), floating piece of land that supported
an upright palm tree. Another time he observed an intact hut adrift at sea on a section of earth.
Table 2. Chronology of Bramble Cay melomys abundance from assessments made on Bramble
Cay since the 1970s.
Time Period Sampling Effort No. of Individuals
Recorded
Dec 1978 Spotlighting Estimated max. of
several hundred
July 1998 444 trap-nights 42
(estimated pop. of 93)
Limpus et al. (1983)
Reference
Dennis & Storch (1998)
Nov 2002 444 trap-nights 10 Latch (2008); P. Latch (pers. comm.)
Nov 2004 444 trap-nights 12
(last known capture)
Late 2009 Casual searching 1-2
(last known record)
Latch (2008); P. Latch (pers. comm.)
E. Stewart (pers. comm.)
Dec 2011
150 trap-nights
nil
Waller et al. (2014); N. Waller (pers. obs.)
Spotlighting
Daytime searching
Nov–Mar 2013 3 camera trap-nights nil S. Preston (pers. comm.)
Mar 2014
Aug–Sep 2014
120 trap-nights
Spotlighting
Daytime searching
900 trap-nights
60 camera trap-nights
Daytime searching
nil
nil
Gynther et al. (2014a)
This study
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