Actually not in that part of Australia it's not!
It' salt water crockadile infested up there and even around the corner at the northern end between New Guinea and Australia (The Torres Straight) the water is shallow, light green and only has currents. One of the worlds great natural wonders - The Great Barrier Reef - blocks any swell coming from the Pacific
I think the surface temperature up there in Australia's case is partly due to the realtive depth of the ocean floor - it's quite shallow up there - in the last Ice Age that was all exposed dry land (Thailand, through Indonesia to Australia) and it's only a rise in ocean level that's submerged it. No surf that's rideable in Northern Australia, but go further north to Indonesia, Java, Bali and anywhere west of there and you get the swell of the great Indian Ocean and some of the best riding waves in the world!
What I find interesting is that if you look at the global map surface temp. you can see some of the major currents in action by temperature distribution. The 30C waters you see around the equator (Northern Australia) actually make it down past the Great Barrier Reef to southern Queensland, then across to South America.
Looking at this pattern I can make out part of the flow responsible for the El Ninio event Australia is suffering.
It looks like South America may be having La Nina from what I saw and it partly explains why we are having this terrible drought over here. On our weather reports here we have thing called the SOL - The Southern Oscillation Index - which tells the state of that current.
Speaking of oceans, on BBC Radio yesterday they had a short report as part of 'State Of The Planet' regarding acidifcation of the worlds oceans due to atmospheric CO2 dumping. Apparently, the total ocean pH has dropped by 0.1 in the last 50 years.
After some modeling and super-computer calculations, they have predicted that if CO2 levels don't drop and keep up at the rate they are at, by 2100, the oceans pH will have dropped a whole point; the ramifications of this are dire - not unlike the micro effect seen in an aquarium if the pH drops.
Apart from osmotic problems with gilled creatures, there are some invertibrates which can't handle a shift in pH in any amount downwards. It affects their shell formation and in the case of higher vertibrates, their oxygen carrying capacity - the scientist likened a squid doing 100% speed in being chased at normal pH, to 50% of that capability just 1 point less, to a marathon runner running a marathon with only one lung. - the food chain gets out of balance in short.
He went on to say that some of the plans for CO2 dumping were recipes for disaster for the oceans because apart from the fact that 12 tonnes of CO2 are absorbed by the oceans every minute!, deliberately dumping it compressed into deep ocean valleys was asking for it - sort of like diffusion that happens with all of us who use CO2 injection in tanks and want the bubbles to get smaller as they leave the generator and make it to the surface of an aquarium tank, but on a massive global scale.
I won't carry on about this, and I do, and have considered the real and economic reasons for two countries in particular who wouldn't sign to the Kyoto Agreement (Australia and the USA), but I think something has be done, even if Kyoto isn't practicable - certainly governments and countries shouldn't , like Australia is unbelievably doing, be considering plants for pressurised CO2 injection into the ground or the sea.
It just shows a disgusting lack of consideration for the future. A complete lack of lateral thinking, and how bound some of this planet is to past technology and the corporations that brought it about.
I think it's about time too, we collectively and globally, stopped looking to the internal combustion method and started using all the development money for oil, gas and coal, to do something to save our oceans (like Hydrogen power for instance).
On an aquarists level it could mean in the future that marine fish keepers will have many less species to choose from. As with some fish like the White Cloud Mountain Minnow, the only examples of some future marine species may be in home fish tanks because the wild is too chemically hostile for them.
Any way enough ranting: here and now is where it's at - what a great site! I've book marked it and shall return regularly - did you do the Java Loop? Thats interesting IMO to see the temperature shifting
Regards,
