61 leafy seadragons, 604 Port Jackson sharks: logging the grim tally of death in South Australia’s algal bloom

Dead and dying sea creatures wash up among sea foam caused by a huge algal bloom at a beach in South Australia. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/The Guardian

Sixty-one leafy seadragons, 604 Port Jackson sharks, 1,999 southern fiddler rays and 287 bluespotted goatfish make up a fraction of the dead washed up on South Australian beaches in the past months.

Since the algal bloom hit SA, hundreds of citizen scientists have come together to create what has become one of the main sources of data on the disaster.