Hamelin Pool Marine Nature Reserve
The Hamelin Pool Marine Nature Reserve is a marine reserve on Shark Bay, Western Australia . It is named after Jacques Félix Emmanuel Hamelin , who passed here in 1801 on an expedition.
The area covers 1,320 km², the waters and coasts of the Hamelin Pool , the approx. 40 km deep bay between the mainland and the Peron Peninsula , i. H. the northeast of the two large main peninsulas of Shark Bay. The reserve was established in 1990.
Its attractions are
- the biogenic mussel sedimentary rock at Shell Beach and
- a colony of stromatolites , which are among the oldest forms of life on earth and only exist in a few places in the 21st century.
Access
From Denham-Hamelin Road , which crosses the peninsula for 100 km from the mainland to Denham , the administrative seat of the Shire of Shark Bay , there is only one spur road to the museum and information center of the reserve. This is located on the premises of the historic telegraph station from 1884. It is one of 38 stations that used to connect the Wyndham telegraph line in the Kimberleys in the north with Albany in the south.
A campsite extends around this building.
From there a 3 km long nature trail leads to the attractions worth protecting.
The mussel sedimentary rock ( Coquina )
Cemented sedimentary rock from cockles of the species Fragum erugatum , which occurs along this coast over a length of about 100 km, was used as building material until the middle of the 20th century. For this purpose it has mussel Quarries ( shell quarries ), in particular the establishment of the church and other buildings in Denham given. Due to the establishment of the protected area, the removal of the rock is now prohibited.
Such a quarry has been reconstructed and explained as a documentation example as part of the educational trail.
The stromatolites
Stromatolites are sedimentary rocks of colonies of cyanobacteria . They are among the oldest evidence of earthly life; Stromatolites can be detected until about 3.5 billion years ago. They have disappeared almost everywhere on earth today and were only known to science as fossils for a long time . When the colony in the Hamelin Pool was discovered by Denham geologists in June 1956, it was the first finding of a living colony by science. In the meantime, a few more colonies have been found, for example in Brazil ( Lagoa Salgada ) and Mexico ( Cuatro Ciénegas ).
The stromatolites in the Hamelin Pool owe their survival to the extremely high salinity of the water (about twice as high as in the open ocean); they had and have no natural enemies under these conditions, which are hostile to other animals.
Up to 3 billion individual microorganisms are concentrated on an area of 1 m². With the help of photosynthesis , they form their peculiar structures. They grow very slowly, a maximum of 1 cm in about 30 years. Structures about 1 m high are therefore almost 3000 years old.
The following structures occur in the Hamelin Pool Marine Nature Reserve, which are explained on the documentation path that runs over a narrow wooden bridge above the shallow water:
- The so-called “ red-capped domes ” are flat structures on the beach, gray-black with a rust-red “hood”. They stopped growing about 500–1000 years ago when the water level fell. The provenance of the red color is disputed; it may be contact with ferrous water or bacteria.
- The young "bushy mats" ( tufted mats ) form flat black carpets under water that look like felt mats from a distance. These are very young structures, barely 1 cm high.
- The "cauliflower" structures ( cauliflowers ) are living older stromatolites under water; the oldest are about 1 to 1.5 m tall.
Web links
Coordinates: 26 ° 23 ′ 0 ″ S , 114 ° 10 ′ 0 ″ E