Eel

Gymnothorax prasinus

Known by many other names, including the Green Moray Eel, Brown Reef Eel, and the Pettifogger.

Eels, even brightly lit, have such an air of mystery. This young one was washed up on a beach.

coming in Postscripts from PS Publishing . . .

Stories are like birthday party goers. I just love for a story of mine to sit beside those of some of my favourite authors, particularly when they don't behave themselves. So I'm thrilled to announce that my youngest squalling brat, "Marks and Coconuts", will be sitting with I-don't-know-who but I'm sure they have interesting fauna behind their ears and will be sure to say all the wrong things—in an upcoming PS Publishing's Postscripts edited by Peter Crowther and Nick Gevers.

Here's the latest bumper-size hardcover Postscripts anthology:
Postscripts #24/25 -The New and Perfect Man edited by Peter Crowther & Nick Gevers

(And I just noticed that Jack Dann and Barry N. Malzberg announced in May that they sold a story called "The Rapture" to Postscripts, and that this story includes an "angel that wears ill-fitting corduroy suits". Lucky for them that Postscripts doesn't have a dress code, though I'm suspicious about that 'ill-fitting' which usually means there's stuff in pockets that shouldn't be. I'm not accusing, mind you, but I've told my little innocent to make sure that their story doesn't take the cake.)

Read Angela Slatter's fascinating interview:
The Postscripts Drive-by: Nick Gevers

I have wanted a story of mine to be in Postscripts for many years, not just because of the company my little brat would keep, but because of PS Publishing—a heavenly publisher for several reasons.

1. This is a brave and active publisher of exciting, unruly fiction, not me-too's—and is genuine quality, not up-itself pretension. They say 'genre' but I say 'piffle' to that label, as their definition is so broad.
2. This is a wonderfully decent publisher to authors in a trade that is too often, indecent in the unfun extreme.

Check out their novels, art books, new releases, and 'Unmissable Deals' here.

Finally, I don't know which issue of Postscripts "Marks and Coconuts" will appear in, but I will say, quite immodestly (with many thanks to two brilliant critics, Ben Peek and Richard Glatz), that it is a cracker of a story.

Skin, Fiction, Mushrooms, & Progress

Magic Mushrooms for Your Biggest Organ
It's good that few people read fiction now. If, for example, you've let Jeff VanderMeer tempt you down the dank history of the city of Ambergris, or found yourself rubbing the top of your head while trying to forget Marc Laidlaw's "Leng", you might want to anoint yourself with something containing fungi as enthusiastically as audiences who had just seen "The Birds" wanted to hit the shops the next day, to buy birdfeeders.

In non-fiction literature on information sites and packages, consumers spend their time more wisely than fiction readers, learning that creams and stuff containing stuff from mushrooms have been designed, formulated, tested and proved "amazing"; and not just that, but produced in sufficient quantities that even you can purchase some! And better yet, the mushrooms used for these miracles don't deplete the mushroom-soup population, nor are they called something disgusting like fungus, let alone caterpillar fungus. Not only that, but on an internet site that bristles with Drs and says it is "Recognized by Medical Authorities", it is written: "a mega celeb in the anti-aging skin care market, Dr. Weil, has infused his Origins products —Mega-Mushroom Face Serum and the Mega-Mushroom Face Cream—with an Asian variety of mushroom. Dr. Weil calls this ingredient a major breakthrough."

He isn't alone. Products such as Super Mushroom Miracle that you can buy over the counter promise (under the text's surface) a level of desirability that even prescription drugs haven't achieved, without expensive spells to the peepers of your beholders. No wonder mushroom miracles are popping up all over. Each one is formulated to give you results that are almost guaranteed to be incredibly amazingly unbelievable, but that you can have within days of purchase or in no time.

Birthday candles stop for no one

"Aging is not simply the passage of time marked by lines & wrinkles. Irritation silently simmering within skin's surface may be invisibly aging your skin faster than the candles on your birthday cake. Origins collaborated with Dr. Andrew Weil to create these clinically proven formulas."
– Mega-Mushroom products site

How Wrinkles Have Created Progress
Ever since women were capable of getting old enough to grow to witch age, the skin care market has been blessed with Drs.

Primitive cream sellers grew fat on the odd unleavened bread snuck into their hands when the rest of the tribe wasn't looking, not to mention Dr Viper-Oil and his imitators accruing piles of shells that they traded for coins, by 300 BCE or, depending on how a historian counts, 2500 BAK (Before Anyone Knows). A few smart sellers, bored with pouring their piles of coins over their heads, thought of opening new markets, so they used their coins to fund the building of sailing ships. These entrepreneurs sailed north—some, up around the left side of Spain—some, up over the beaches of the Mediterranean and the Confusing Seas, then up the Steppes and still north—all of them ultimately landing up in lands so cold that those brave explorers knew they had hit the (first *) Lands of Promise. For here, women were fair and beauteous for a week after achieving Womanhood, and then winter hit, and they wrinkled faster than a linen suit, forever.

The Progress of the Anti-Aging Miracle-Workers led, as Common People once knew but have forgot, to History—the unsettling of northern Europe, where before that time, prune-faced hags lived from puberty till death, in ignorance of hydration, and their children and menfolk waxed fat and slothful; and the only axes those tribes possessed were used in the winter, to hack portions of frozen strawberry ice cream.

Strawberryicecream Hacker
(Hypoallergenic: Note strawberry pick with huller)
Norðreyjar Bog, Unknown date

* In Australia (climate: Mars), Drs have fallen to their death, surveying facial crevasses.
" I once left my make up bag at a hotel and had to get them to mail it back to me. It was only when I priced up replacing things that I realised I had ' invested ' thousands of dollars in my face. Sad but true. "
– Australian bon vivant "thirty something"

Why Mushrooms?
If you take a look at the typical government-approved picture of skin, you'll see immediately that Government sees your skin as a disgusting cube of busy gunk. It's no wonder soft smooth skin takes experts in beauty to restore it, not anatomists who don't care about how someone looks. Their picture has hairs long as whale harpoons popping through what looks like a lumpy mattress, and in the stuffing, a tangle of rusty springs and clumped dead rats. No wonder your skin sags, wrinkles, and is something to run screaming from. Whose wouldn't?

Now see this mushroom nestling beside a jar of an unnamed Mushroom Cream.

See that the mushroom is like your skin should be, complete with the lovely beauty mark. Here there are no lumpy layers, only such suppleness that the mushroom curves around the jar, like the curves in your to-be-soft cheek, if you purchase now.



Your True Skin Layers
How your skin is really constructed. Two views from noted experts:













Note that in both of these views, the Elastic has been removed. That is because these model skins belong to size 0 women who have had their Accordion Layer sufficiently vacuum sealed, Not to Be Resuscitated. But fat is a cultural issue to be covered another time. Drs have been expert in rich cures for weight gain and loss, accordionly.


Getting back to skin. Unless you use mega mushroom stuff, never let anyone you want to be your lover get this close:


"[the nipple] was so varied with spots, pimples, and freckles, that nothing could appear more nauseous … The fair skins of our English ladies . . . appear so beautiful to us, only because they are of our own size, and their defects not to be seen but through a magnifying glass; where we find by experiment that the smoothest and whitest skins look rough, and coarse, and ill-coloured."
– Captain Lemuel Gulliver

A Salutary Lesson: We all need anti-aging miracles.

They only read fiction.


After only two applications of a clinically-proven miracle cream,
this mushroom looked like this:












Tho' use all miracles with moderation.

Wanted! The Baker's Dozen Gang

The gang lit out at cockcrow, making a bold but wisely led escape.

"Slow and steady" said their leader. "Just roll along."

Come breakfast-fixing-time back in town, the whoops rang out. "Where're they headed?" asked a visitor.

"Anywhers but here," an expert said.

The posse mounted while coffee boiled, and each man chugged a mug while sitting on his horse and burnt his throat on account of having to catch the gang before High Noon under the pitiless sun, which had a habit of being hot enough to wake the posse's lice in a bad mood, itchy from their own mites, and along with the lice's mites, ready to wolf breakfast. So there was no time to waste in catching the gang, especially as the posse, like everyone in town, had been mightily looking forward to the spectacule when each member of the gang would be broken, as broken as a wild horse.

Bent Jim, the tracker, led the posse, mumbling. Not only was he the expert tracker. He didn't have a horse. At first, he circled the town like a dog with a cold, but finally found what he called a track, and set out. For an hour, he did his famous almost-crawl, verbally lambasticating the gang with increasing creativity.

Then he smiled grimly, pushed his hands against the back of his waist to help him straighten, cracked a couple spine bones or something else, and ran down a hill, hotly followed by 7 jolting, yelling, hat-swinging, sweaty men on 7 tolerant horses, disorderdedly followed by the rest of the posse.

At the base of the hill, the men still had steam to blow off, so they danced those horses till the hills echoed from hooves clipping hardpacked ground, and neighs, and the dust rose to coat the grease on the 15 mustaches, 11 beards with mustaches, and innumerable faces whose dirt and hair were too long married to be separately distinguished.

By the time the dust settled, the posse was left with one hopping mad tracker. What Bent Jim said wasn't polite but the men were used to him. He subsided quickly however, and set off again because he had to because of that pitiless sun, which never stops getting higher or lower for nobody except Daylight Savings Time for whom it either speeds up or slows down, if it remembers which.

So for a while Bent Jim raced around as well as he could, being about as bent as Bent with a capital B gets, cussing better than he could race. By the time he took off in a straight line, he had a frantic glint to his eye, and as was told later by one of the posse (many times): "The words, wild goose chase, excaped old Jim."

But Bent Jim, being the expert that he was, loped along with an easy stride soon enough.

"We've almost got them," he called out at 10:03 AM (by his wristwatch).

At that, the Kid in the posse twirled his lasso, to the laughter of the other men, who spurred their horses in anticipation, earning a lot of enmity (or emnity, which is just as well, for it wasn't spoken).

"Get ready to round 'em up!" Bent Jim yelled at 10:56.

"Were are they?" asked Burtrand who couldn't spell any better than his mother.

"Just over that hill," answered Jim, "I reckon (at 11:48, give or take some punctuation)."

The posse squinted against the sun's glare, out over the open country, but try as they did, they couldn't see over the hill.

11:4856. Bent Jim ran ahead, mumbling and hissing over the baking ground, the posse following behind him, men kicking the flanks of 15 increasingly slow mares, 4 stallions who were preoccupied with their own plans, and a number of other horses who were in no mood to have us remind them of sexes.

"Come on!" he yelled. "Ya lousabouts. Move along now with me, and we'll catch the gang afore High Noon."

11:59 AM (by Bent Jim's watch, but by the sun's time, HN had taken place an hour and twelve minutes ago). Bent Jim reached the top of a long hill going down, and expelled a long, low whistle. The base of the hill was as hidden as a dead man's thoughts. Forest: cool, closed country that would be thickly carpeted with pine needles.

"They've licked me," he said, to himself.

When finally, the posse caught up to him, the horses surrounded him on their own account. He was kneeling about two feet down the long slope. The horses snorted, relieved, as the men slid off.

Bent Jim was peering at the ground, all right, but this time anyone could see what his expert eyes did.

Burtrand clucked his tongue.

"It's too late for this bastard," said the Kid, trying to be tough.

At the same time, down in the valley where the gang had holed up an hour and eight minutes ago, XL, the leader said: "Let this be a lesson to you fresh ones. We're always wanted. That we know, like we know we'd make lousy gun slingers. But geniuses we ain't. You can practice all you want. You ain't never gonna learn to gallop."

Meanwhiles back up the slope, objectionably next to Bent Jim, Burtrand burped something long past et. "My stomach's crying out," he whined. "Can I?" He reached down with some embarrassment, but only some–and a lot of fear. Not that he touched anything, yet.

"No!" yelled the Kid, his eyes wide. Men turned their backs on the sight and walked away.

"I get his horse," said one.

Bent Jim straightened up. "I don't rightly know. But you'll probably live if it hain't been on the ground for more than ten minutes."

Live free or fry

____________________________________

These were caught whilst they debated free will vs. determinism.
There is some debate over whether they were caught 'because' they were debating.
'Sadly', they are not available to add their weights to the discussion, 'sadly' having been quarantined in quotes because it has been objected to as so unscientific a term that the use of the word adumbrates the issues.

Soon to be waved away

Like the days of free bar lunches, without the salt

Meet Iain Rowan at infinities and beyond, where he not only tells about the new free sampler from infinity plus, but also leads you to another freebie, Rowan's unhealthkick-for-weak-hearts "One Step Closer" from Nowhere to Go, his crime collection that is definitely not lounging.

an aside
I hope that Rowan gets the breaks he needs, as there is so much drab and predictable crime fiction around—and I include Ian Rankin in that lot, whose characters make me think of empty cardboard boxes in the rain. I don't usually hiss at books I've read, leaving that to the experts; but I bought one of his bestsellers at an airport for a Sydney—Europe tortureflight, and partway through the book I found myself reaching for the airline magazine to break the boredom.

Back to earth again

where rain has brought forth fungal flames.

I don't want to bore you with travel pics or tales, so will just report that you might have been treated to the unauthorised, unexpurgated Secrets of the Astroidian *s if I hadn't been caught with my first draft of it as I was leaving. They don't want anything revealed, and as you might know, have recently had a hand in the decision to cut off those SETI eavesdroppers.

But what of me as an author on Asteroid * you ask? Yes, it was hard work holding out samples of fiction all day, for tastings. It's satisfying at times, especially when a customer asks for two measures of yours truly's artisan-created Scientist Fiction (a label that surprised me, but since I've written about scientists a lot, I'm not complaining. The labels also said "chewy", but scientists should not be alarmed, yet). And you might have laughed seeing the result of the equivalent of the Worshipful Society of Anarchists' reverse-shelving of the Healthy-and Junkreads. But it's good to be home again. An author's ego gets malnutrition on Asteroid *. Fiction consumers there are as interested in authors as earthling eaters are, in having chickens sign their eggs.

But looking at earth from beyond gods' heavens does excite the synapses.

Their different classifying of genres made me think of one genre that is overdue for recognition here: Chook Fiction. I don't know why there are so many wonderful stories that revolve around chickens, but there are.

Here are a magic 3 Chook Lit tales to get you started, and I invite you to tell about others:

"Count Poniatowski and the Beautiful Chicken" by Elizabeth Ziemska
"The Blood-Feud of Toad-Water" by Saki (H.H. Munro)
Love Among the Chickens by P.G. Wodehouse

But we mustn't forget Egg Lit.

Which brings us to Alisa Krasnostein and her fabulous Twelfth Planet Press, where great reads meet creativity cavorting with excellence of execution. I highly recommend TPP's

Doubles Series

• Roadkill/Siren Beat by Robert Shearman/Tansy Rayner Roberts
• The Company Articles of Edward Teach/Angaelien Apocalypse by Thoraiya Dyer/Matthew Chrulew
• Above/Below by Stephanie Campisi/Ben Peek

This is a book format that has had its times, but has never been popular. All the more covetousness for collectors. Abebooks' current example (if it hasn't been snapped up) is a book that would reek nonsense if it could get that interesting, yet is offered for an astronomical price, for it cuts quite a figure as an up-down-back-forth production, in musty leather. As with the Pope's advocacy of Latin, this book isn't meant to be actually understood or enjoyed, just appreciated. Read Dos-à-dos & Tête-bêche Bindings

All the better to buy a "Doubles" that is a great read whichever way you hold it. And what could be better than a whichcomesfirst Chicken/Egg Double? Not that I'm going to lay that egg.

Instead, here's an effusion of jelly fungus, one of many outbreaks of fungal fruitings that are popping out everywhere around here now.


And before I leave this post today, a few more recommendations.

Steve Aylett's newest must-read novel, Novahead, has just been released, at a must-buy price. I've listed it in my Irresistibles on my newly updated site here, where there are many other new recommendations, and some new great, brave and funny quotes. Spencer Pate caused a problem, though. I only quoted one ioteena of his uproarious thesis, but dearly wanted to cut this and that and slap it into my site. Do read his essay, unless you are a vewy sewious poet.

The call of the astroidians

They've got a yen, and will not be denied. This trip will be longer than my previous visits, because this time they've set aside a deli section for me to fill.

As usual when I leave for Asteroid * , I leave you with a glimpse of a treasure so great and full of mysteries, that worlds of study are mere bits of dust upon its surface.

How to survive an American luxury hotel

Some days there is too much news. So today's column will instead, contemplate that peculiar instrument of temptation and torture, the "coffee/tea maker"—finishing this long meal of words with a brisk mention of that other item "featured" in hotel guest-rooms: the refrigerator.

Your correspondent, a citizen of the world, flying into the USA from Australia, recently stayed in a hotel that bills itself as "luxury", though it stoops to offer conference deals to the likes of me, which is why this survival guide exists.

On arriving after an interminable (patience, reader! venting necessary, but this won't be a complete blow-out) plebe-class journey (a large part of it taken up with the big Q: how can an airline legally sell a full-fare ticket to a seat that only a person with one leg can use with any degree of stoicism, the other space under the seat in front being entirely taken up with a metal box stuffed with something useful to something, but not a passenger) err, upon arrival, then three more hours' travel . . .

. . . (finally!) the check-in to The Hotel was efficient, the room pleasantly large and unmusty, the bed firm, the sheets crisp and white; and the shower was hot and beautifully full-strength on the muscles. The robe was roomy enough for the person who must have broken the scale at the unbelievable number it was stuck on, but the scale was only a curiosity to play on after the shower – the Great Necessity at This Point being, of course: that first cup of tea, followed by another with a pile of pre-conference work that had to be faced.

The coffee/tea maker wasn't the plug-in jug that is common to even the commonest of Australian overnight stops. Nor was there a generosity of tea. Only two small one-cup tea bags. The bags, branded "F______ Hotels & Resorts" have airs—one green and one black tea with descriptions including "Jasmine Butterfly #1: Premium early season China green tea - May jasmine blossoms impart an expansive floral bouquet on this premium quality Fujian Province green tea".

And there was not milk, again something that every Australian hotel, motel, and even b & b considers as necessary as sheets. Little pots of non-dairy creamer substitute substituted for the cream for coffee, though the coffee offered has airs (two filter-packets of it, each big enough to make a several-cup pot of coffee).

The real surprise was the maker itself. It took your correspondent 45 foggy minutes to figure out how it worked, because it was impossible to believe the truth. A tea drinker is supposed to drink tea made from water boiled and filtered through the plastic basket that is impregnated with the oils and acids of coffee grounds. The result is a tea made—if one would— with water that tastes as if it's taken from a tumbling stream run down a back flight of apartment stairs lit at night with the sounds of drunks kicking fighting tomcats. Not that I tasted the water. The smell of the plastic basket was enough.

Luxury

Oils and acids
find homes in
plastics,
while steel is hard
and mean.
Coffee, ground,
finds plastic sound
& luxuriantly welcoming.

The hotel makes a big deal about tea, and it's not alone. It, like many in cities across America, has "English" teas in its lounge. But if you order tea there, the thought of being offered milk with tea (or even lemon) is as much a part of this hotel's tradition as serving their martinis with a twist of blubber. It isn't even just the English who have milk with their tea. A large part of the civilised world makes milky tea, and it's from them that the English learned refreshment. But even if one drinks green tea, fragrant and golden, the expansive bouquet is best tickled up only with a mix of other tea, for instance, and never with the smell of armpits, old socks, cat spray or the maker that could never be a result of intelligent design. A plastic coffee/tea maker is a plastic coffee or tea maker — and as much an abomination as non-dairy dairy.

Better by far, if a hotel makes a pretense of accommodating the wonts of those from distant shores, as travellers sometimes are: a simple water boiler and instant coffee, or in a luxury dive, a coffee maker and a humble boiling coil, if it pleases the Management. The present state of tea-making expectations vs. reality in American hotels is Ironic, too, since tea has become insufferably precious now there, with tea shops and emporiums (an emporium is a shop which sells premium packaging with some stuff inside) popping up in all cities with any luxury to them. Prices for little bags of tea prove there is always a new field to plough when it comes to people with too much money and no sense. The New Yorker bears ads for an electric jug (so much more efficient than kettles on the stove, but curiously UnAmerican) that heats water to (oh, my thermometer!) precisely X degrees (no more nor less, as demanded by your Phoo Er is Human, which is Divine-brand tea, tip-picked [only the first 2 mm of each violet-tinged leaf] between 2:35 and 4:79 a.m., on the 3d night of the crescent moon when the barometer is at x, windspeed x, in the province of ..., a tea that that is cured for ten years at moisture levels monitored by …) with an exactitude that Phileas Fogg would approve, if he were a pretentious food bore.

So how to survive the cruel disappointment, how to break the spiral of depression that can result from being forced to live in primitive conditions of deprivation when surrounded by so much wealth, including a jumbo bathrobe and assorted citrus-scented toiletries? It's a cruel truth luxury has many meanings — one person thinking that this hotel's suited and hatted bag-carriers mark it out as luxury, while I suspect that many of us who are tea drinkers are more comfortable carrying our own, and would carry a camel's-worth if we could only have our cups of tea in bed. The lack of the means to restore the dead, to provide comfort upon waking in a strange room at 5:30 a.m., or having a quiet escape and a cuppa alone in one's room in the middle of a conference, is sorely felt. I haven't even mentioned the biscuits (cookies) that most Australian hotels still also provide, making a stay in even the worst hotel something that makes you feel at least a bit good, like when you've just given blood (where you always get a cuppa–strong, white and sweet—and two bikkies). Another thing about making it oneself, by oneself. To each, one's taste provided for. I like my tea strong enough to walk on, with only enough milk to make it opaque. Others like theirs weak as a screaming brat's mother's request to her child to be considerate.

Tea at will. Tea in private. Tea in bed. If Americans met it, they might also redefine necessity, like this cruise-chooser. " This is going to sound silly, but it might be that the deciding factor between a cruise on either Celebrity Eclipse or P&O Azura in summer 2010 might come down to in-cabin tea & coffee making."

That is a pick-me-up that no expensive bottle of water, even if it's from an island, can bring. But enough of tragedy. Now for succour. Look in the refrigerator, and have a laugh. I didn't until the next morning.

As early as anything opened, I left the hotel. Shaking with withdrawal, I found a local market where I bought four egg-sized plums to have instead of four cups of tea at various times of the day and night. I ate one, and opened the fridge to store the rest. You probably already know that the fridge was so packed with bottles and other things to sell, that the plums had to be balanced between bottle necks. There wasn't room to do even that.

As for the fridge, here's some tips, gleaned from some well-oiled experts in the lounge, when I asked them if they'd hit this in their rooms.

(general laughter)

"All hotels do that now."

"Don't touch anything in there! If anyone sees your fingerprints the bottles, that's the same as eating or drinking the stuff. You'll be charged for anything you move."

"I always ring ahead and tell them I'm diabetic."

Oh, and there's another way to survive all this luxury. Again, I prescribe laughter. Open the In Room Dining Service Menu. I purchased mine so I couldn't be accused of stealing it.
For your delectation, have a taste of these crumpets:

"Anna, the Duchess of Bedford … experienced a 'sinking feeling' in the late afternoon."
– from The Origin of Afternoon Tea

"Honey BBQ Bacon, Honey BBQ Link, Apple Cinnamon Mini Muffins And Two Waffles"
– from Breakfast To Go, Business Dogs on the Go, Dog's Delight (they get their own page, which includes Movie Snacks)

Fwah! Rosie has woken from the dead. She's howling!

If only the Duchess of Bedford, or the CEO of this Luxury hotel & resort chain could have seen Rosie's pride at finding her own Dog's Delight one morning — a roo paw of distinguished vintage. What, Rosie? Well, I'll pass on your question about the Movie Snacks. We notice "lollipop" and "banana biscotti" but the only thing to go with sheepdog trials is lamb tails and …. Hello, hello? Sorry, Rosie. I think he experienced a sinking feeling.

Washed up but still together – The coralline around the dead man's fingers

Two seaweeds, nowadays more properly known as macroalgae

The coralline (I'm not game to say which species) is brittle and has been bashed on its way to this between-tide resting place on the beach. But the Codium fragile is floppy and as fun as its common name, much more fun and inspiring than the more proper (imposed 'common'?) name, branched velvet weed. Yes, it is velvety, but that's like telling a child with new rubber boots that a puddle is a meeting of declivities in a road-surface. Velvet ignores the potential of the codium fragile (which isn't as fragile as all that), for as soon as a normal person picks up this seaweed as a freshly sea-disgorged clump (inevitably finding it as limp, bouncy, and boneless as a rubber chicken) the healthy impulse is first, to waggle it so that its fingers flop around – and then to throw the hand in some unsuspecting innocent's face.


Seriously now, recommended reading:
The Intertidal Rocky Shore by J Floor Anthoni, Seafriends
– Informative, passionate, and excellent pictures, too

Macroalgae: Prime Facts by Dr Alan Millar, Principal Research Scientist, Royal Botanical Gardens, Sydney, NSW Department of Primary Industries, June 2009
– Beautifully communicative –"With few exceptions, macroalgae are strictly benthic plants; that is they are always attached to the seabed or a solid substratum such as …" – and also a life-preserver to those of us willing but unable to identify –"The Australian continent hosts the richest marine macroalgal flora in the world with some 3000 species documented. The southern coast of Australia has about 1200 of these species."