page_title: Port Phillip
section_title: Ecology
hierarchical_section_title: Port Phillip / Ecology
caption_attribution_description: English: Blue Blubber Jellfish in Port Phillip Bay
context_page_description: Port Phillip, is a horsehead-shaped bay in the central coastline of southern Victoria, Australia. The bay is surrounded mostly by metropolitan Greater Melbourne in its main eastern portion, and the city of Greater Geelong in the much smaller western portion north of the Bellarine Peninsula. Geographically, the bay covers 1,930 square kilometres and the shore stretches roughly 264 km. Although it is extremely shallow for its size, most of the bay is navigable. The deepest portion is only 24 metres, and half the region is shallower than 8 m. The volume of the water in the port is around 25 cubic kilometres.
  Before European settlement the area around Port Phillip was divided between the territories of the Wathaurong, Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung Nations. Its waters and coast are home to seals, whales, dolphins, corals, and many kinds of seabirds and migratory waders.
  The first Europeans to enter the bay were the crews of HMS Lady Nelson, commanded by John Murray and, ten weeks later, HMS Investigator commanded by Matthew Flinders, in 1802. Subsequent expeditions into the bay took place in 1803 to establish the first settlement in Victoria, near Sorrento, but was abandoned in 1804.
context_section_description: Jellyfish are a familiar sight in Port Phillip, and its waters are home to species such as Australian fur seals, bottlenose dolphins, common dolphins, humpback whales, and southern right whales. Many other cetacean species may also migrate off the areas. The smooth toadfish is one of the most common fishes in muddy areas. The bay has many endemic species including the bluedevil fish and fantastic sponge walls on the Lonsdale wall in the heads of the bay.  It also hosts breeding colonies of Australian fur seals. Occasionally, Australian sea lions, New Zealand fur seals, subantarctic fur seals, and leopard seals may come into the bay as well. Certain individual southern elephant seals may frequent the bay as well.
  Swan Bay, adjacent to Queenscliff, is an important feeding ground for waterbirds and migratory waders. The Mud Islands, off Sorrento, are an important breeding habitat for white-faced storm petrels, silver gulls, Australian pelicans and Pacific gulls. Salt marshes in the northwestern sections of the bay, such as that in the Werribee Sewage Farm and the adjacent Spit Nature Conservation Reserve, are within the Port Phillip Bay (Western Shoreline) and Bellarine Peninsula Ramsar Site, listed as wetlands of international importance under the Ramsar Convention, and the critically endangered orange-bellied parrot is found at three wintering sites with saltmarsh habitat around Port Phillip and the Bellarine Peninsula. A variety of seabirds, such as Australasian gannets, nest on artificial structures in the bay.
  Port Phillip contains 3 Marine Sanctuaries managed by Parks Victoria to protect and conserve the bay's biodiversity, ecological processes and the natural and heritage features.
caption: Blue blubber jellyfish in Port Phillip
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