Mangrove magic
AS OUR SMALL INFLATABLE boat pulls up to the pristine white sands of uninhabited Pipon Island, off the coast of far north Queensland, Dr Jeff Kelleway is first to jump out. Wearing gumboots and a floppy hat, and with a compass hanging around his neck, he is hardly the picture of a typical weekend visitor to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR).
Following Jeff, a research fellow in the School of Earth, Atmospheric and Life Sciences at the University of Wollongong (UOW), is Associate Professor Dr Sarah Hamylton, a marine geographer at UOW, and PhD students Zachary Nagel-Tynan and Oxana Repina.
They are here to map and investigate the Howick Group National Park (Cape York Peninsula Aboriginal Land), a remote collection of 19 continental islands and sand cays located in the Coral Sea off the coast of Cape Melville, in the
