Dog owners should watch out for puffer fish: Letters, November 15

I was ignorant when my dog very early 6am, Sunday morning, came across something, he went to lie on it but I quickly pulled him back.

A nearby photographer told me it was a puffer fish. I happened to tell a friend and he said they are poisonous, fatal to dogs. I feel very fortunate my dog is fine.

Eunice Curran, Tarrawanna

One of my most memorable experiences was standing on a Port Fairy beach in Victoria at dusk while dozens of short-tailed dive-bombed above my head into sand dunes where they nested.

The birds had returned in September from their 16,000-km migration up to Japan, then via Siberia to the north of Alaska.

But that was about 25 years ago. Since then, there have been numerous reports of deaths, emaciated birds and late arrivals ("What's killing the shearwaters washing up dead on Illawarra beaches?", Illawarra Mercury, November 10).

The birds have starved and been weakened from lack of food.

The main cause in 2015 and 2019 was warm ocean waters which contain less nutrients and life. The temperature of the oceans in the northern hemisphere this year have been off the chart.

Because shearwaters only have one partner and only lay one egg each year, it is hard for their populations to rebound.

Let's hope we can stop burning fossil fuels before it is too late for the shearwaters and other species at risk.

Ray Peck, Hawthorn, Vic

Susan Barnes, writing about Wollongong's bike obsessed council, is on the money when she suggests we "vote the whole lot out". ('Bikes are not the solution' - Illawarra Mercury, November 11).

It's clear Wollongong Council sees the uptake of pushbikes throughout its LGA as the most important issue on its books.

It seems there are no grown-ups at City Hall and a band of juveniles are driving Council's pushbike decision-making - decisions that have created more than 50km of expensive and mostly unused cycle ways.

It's totally implausible to believe middle aged or older people are going to dump their motor cars and peddle their way around Wollongong's hilly suburbs.

Any fool understands the risks involved in mixing densities of pedestrians and cyclists together on the same concrete strip, especially in today's society where cyclists are being led to believe the sacred pushbike rules.

Richard Burnett, Wollongong

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