The Milky Way

June 9,2010

Location: Heron Island

Today was filled with some highs and lows. I woke up this morning and the cold I have been ignoring for the past couple of days let its presence known. I had a headache, running nose, throat so sore I couldn’t talk and maybe even a little fever. I felt misirble…and there was no way I could spend the day sleeping it off. High tide was early this morning (about 7, not too early). My partner and I decided to go out after breakfast. We wanted the tide to be not too high but high enough we didn’t get stranded on coral. We headed out and miserable thing number two happened…my camera broke. I think. It just randomly decided to not register my memory card any more. Super upset. Now I can only take 10 pictures at a time. So if I wasn’t already in a bad enough mood I realize we are surrounded by a million little jellies. Freaked out I stood up hit some coral scraped up my foot. Grr not my day. I later learn that the jellies were non stinging jellies (well actually one species mixed in the heaps is a stinging jelly but I’ll talk about that later). Angry, sad, miserable I go into shore with less then an acceptable amount of data collected. I had all afternoon to recuperate do some research and figure out what was wrong with my camera. At 2 we got to go out to the coral edge to do some deep snorkeling. I was really excited but again kind of upset I couldn’t bring along my camera. I didn’t want my seemingly horrible day ruin the experience. The trip ended up being amazing. I saw so many cool fish. It kind of felt like a dream come true, swimming through schools and being completely surrounded by tropical fish with bright radiant colors. The parrat fish crunching on the coral added to the acoustics of the tranquil ocean. Lingering above a sea turtle as it causally and nonchalantly makes its way through coral looking for something to nibble. Spotting a shark lurking in the midst of coral debris. To top it off the dolphins that came within 10 meters of us as we drifted with the current. My day seemed turned around, the peacefulness of the ocean was unbelievable. As we were making our way back to shore in the boat, Glen told us about a nice spot where the sting rays go as the tide starts to turn. We decided to go for a snorkel. It was frightening getting in the water with these beasts. Giant shovel nosed rays (if you don’t know what these are, try to picture a sting ray that looks like a shark…or you could google it) by the half dozen were just sitting on the ocean floor (granted at this stage we are in 4 feet of water, so basically they were in your face). Stingrays were everywhere and so were the jellies. The same jellies I mentioned earlier. And yes, to go along with my lows of the day, I got stung by one of the stupid little stinging jelly. It didn’t hurt too badly just like a little stinging electrocution. The rays were specktular (most were cow tailed rays, like the ones that barbed Steve Irwin). I was super nervous but quickly learned that as long as your presence is known they are not frightened and thus will not harm you. If you just hover at an angle to them and not make sudden movements you would be fine. So after the rays we finally got to get out of our wetsuits and the sun was going down so we had to high tail it back to the station before it got too dark to see the trail. After dinner we had a lecture on the chemical warfare of the sea…mostly talking about chemicals fish secrete as a defense mechanism. After the lecture a few of us and the professors headed out to the beach to observe some biolumenscients (you see a bright flash of light in the water) at one point we ended up inducing the lights by scuffling around in the water (they photon nerves are activated when it runs into something). While we were on the beach the sky was amazing. You could clearly see the milky way and the southern cross. There were more stars in the sky then one could comprehend. I even saw a shooting star. After staring at the night sky and joking about sleeping on the beach (one of the many rules of this place is that you can’t sleep on the beach) we headed over to the docks to see if we could spot the sharks. We didn’t see sharks but we saw a bunch of sea turtles and a group of about 25 sting rays. We then flopped down on the dock and stared at the night sky for another hour. I was wanting to stay there all night (no rule about sleeping on the dock). So for a day filled with so many painful moments it had equally amazing moments to balance it all out.

First Snorkel on the Great Barrier Reef

June 8,2010
Location: Heron Island
Started out this morning with our first snorkel out on the reef. Finally I fulfilled a life dream of snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef. It was a little odd because the tide was coming out as we were out there so we were barely scraping over the top of the corals. With blues and greens and yellows and reds. The fish were amazing. They were bright and colorful just like how I imagined. Looking out in the distance under the water you can see the schools of fish swimming around and through the corals. Once you swam to them then they hide out of view, but if you were patient they will reappear and go about swimming around. After we finished up our snorkel (actually when the tide got too low that we couldn’t swim over the corals any more we had brekky and a lecture soon following. The lecture was mainly over the types of fish we just saw and will see at our time on Heron Island. We then went on a reef walk. Since it was low tide we could walk through the coral beds and Glen could point out all the different types of corals. It was cool finally learning the scientific names to the wonderful corals. After a hour trek we headed back for lunch. We got started on projects soon after lunch. My project is on gobies. We want to measure the re-emergence times of gobies after they are frightened by a predator. If you don’t know much about gobies I’ll give you a little background info. Gobies have a mutalistic relationship with shrimp. The shrimp excavate a burrow in which both the shrimp and the goby in return is a watchman for any potential predators.
After we decided on a project and came up with a methodology we gained our first data set. The sun was starting to set and we were informed that a group of sea turtle hatchlings were flown in that afternoon and were scheduled to be released on the beach at sun down. We headed over to watch/help the babies find their way safely to the ocean and enjoyed another beautiful sunset.

Heron Island

June 7, 2010

Location: Gladestone/ Heron island

We got to sleep in!!! So naturally I woke up at 6. We didn’t have to check out of the motel until 10 but I caught some cartoons on TV then headed out. We rode on a catamaran (a huge boat) to the island. It was about 2 hours of the most bumpy boat ride ever. I normally do not have problems with boat rides and sea sickness but an hour on this boat had me squirming to get off. When we got to the dock we were whisked away to our research station accommodation. The only other settlement on the island is a very exclusive resort, currently only 20 people are staying at the resort. It truly is beautiful and more of what I thought an Australian island would look like. The water is that beautiful turquoise color you see in all the pictures. It is peaceful and quiet and a tad bit warmer than Straddie. It is so beautiful here. The island is a coral cay island. It was formed out by the coral larvae that settled in the sandy substrate and continued to grow and regrow ontop of each other. The island sits right on top of Heron reef, the southernmost point of the Great Barrier Reef system. We had a brief introduction like the last research center then we got to explore the island as a class. We saw new vegetation and new wildlife. It is quite the remarkable little island. You are able to walk around the entire perimeter in a half hour. And there is a nice little nature walk through the center of the island. After our walk we had dinner and then a late night lecture on how the island was formed. I can’t wait for our first snorkel tomorrow morning.

Are you afraid of heights?

June 6, 2010
Location: Tin Can Bay/Rainbow Beach
This morning we woke up bright and early to check out the humpback dolphins that come to the shore every morning. Not many people know about the feeding of the dolphins but in the 1950s there was a dolphin that was severely injured and stranded itself on the shore of tin can bay. The locals found the dolphin and nursed it back to health. The dolphin learned that it could receive fish from this area so when it came back after healing it brought with him a few other dolphins from his pod. Every generation learned and now about 4 or 5 dolphins are regularly seen coming up to the beach. After we saw the dolphins we went back to the motel and had breakfast. We started our journey to rainbow beach. Rainbow beach was named after the towering colored sand cliffs near the beach. Aboriginal legend states that an ancient aboriginal god threw himself into the sand cliffs in a fight over a woman, coloring them forever. The sand cliffs were made up of natural sand blows, basically areas of land where a natural disaster wiped all vegetation from the area. While we were walking over to the beach through one of the sand blows, we saw a dune that was prefect for sledding. There were two local kids up there already and they offered to let us use there boogey boards to slide down. The climb up the dune was the challenging part. The fine grains of sand made foot holds nearly impossible. I would move up five steps and then slide down two. But finally I made it to the top and man I was a lot higher then I thought I was. I finally gained the courage to go down on the board. It was a lot of fun. A face full of sand was well worth the adrenaline rush of falling down a cliff side on a board. After we were done with our adventures (I thought we were done, but I guess Glen had other plans in mind) we made out way down to the beach. Only problem was to get to the beach we had to slide down a rocky sand cliff. I was super scared but at the same time I was having a lot of fun. The cliff towered over the beach making the people look like microscopic ants. It was quite the climb for a person afraid of heights, you know the old saying don’t look down, well you had to look down to see where to step next. After we were all safe on the ground and we marveled at the cliff we just scaled we played on the beach for a while. We went for a swim then started walking up the beach towards the shops and stuff. It was probably a 2 hour walk along the beach before we finally found the actual beach access. We stayed in the little shopping square for a couple of hours then made our way back to the bus. We had a six hour drive ahead of us to Gladestone, the city we were picking up the boat to Heron Island. We got to our next motel found food then hit the sack.

Underwater world

Hello all,
Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. Between projects, papers and awesome adventures its tough finding time to stay current on the journal. The next few post may lack detail but its all there. Enjoy!

June 5,2010

Location: Tin Can Bay

Today we went to Underwater world just another aquarium with the typical fish, sharks, otters, even sea lions. We got to have a guided tour around the aquarium. I think I would have rather roamed the aquarium solo or with just a few of my mates. I didn’t learn a heap of information but they did have quite a few exhibits of native species that I don’t normally get to see at an aquarium. I always do enjoy going to aquariums so seeing a new one was quite exciting. After the aquarium we had a two hour bus ride up to our next accommodation in Tin Can Bay. We ate dinner at the motel and just went to sleep. We did have a tv so I finally got to see Australian news (most shows on Australian TV are American shows). Tomorrow we will continue our journey to Heron Island with a few stops along the way.

On Top of the World

June 4, 2010

Location: Stradbroke Island (Point Lookout)/ Brisbane

Today we checked out of the research center early and headed over to the northern end of the island. Finally we got to see the ocean and walk a real Australian beach. Point lookout was beautiful. We first walked main beach and saw the sand dune that used to gradually move every year. They used to dump the islands trash in front of the dune and the movement would eventually cover it up. However they finally realized the devastating effects of those actions and decided to stabilize the dune. We then walked up to point lookout. This spot (the highest on the island) is the perfect location to see the humpback whales on their yearly migration. We were hoping to see a few humpbacks but unfortunately we didn’t see any. We saw some whale watchers (those that document and survey the number of whale sightings, basically to track the population size). The journey to the top of point lookout and the journey through the rocky headlands to the different lookout points deserve a blog post of their own, however, I don’t have much time to describe the view. We followed a trail all the way to the top (basically hiking only most of us were in flip flops). The view was so beautiful. You could see the bottom of the ocean from a few hundred feet up. The shallower waters had a crystal clear turquoise color. There were rocky caves that the water waves crashed into creating the most wonderful sounds. We also saw some turtles and rays. One white spotted eagle ray that we saw in the second lookout point leaped clear out of the water twice. It was truly spectacular. Also we did see a couple of bottle nosed dolphins at the second lookout point. One was a little baby calf. After failing at spotting a whale we headed down to the beach. We followed the beach all the way around the point curve of the island. We eventually made our way to a swim beach (patrolled by lifeguards). We sat on the beach for awhile before lunch (a bunch of people were tanning) I went to play on a playground. We then decided to go to the other beach because of the way the wind was hitting the island the other beach was warmer and calmer. I fell asleep on the beach and woke up about a half hour before we were leaving. We started heading over to the barge to make our way back to the mainland for the night. We did stop at a freshwater spring because we were running a little early. The spring was beautiful and warm, my best descriptive analogy would be like ice tea. It was clear but brown. We caught another barge back to the main land. When we got back to Brisbane we all went out to dinner at Jo Jos. The restaurant was more like 5 restaurants in one. You were assigned a table number and went around the different restaurants to make an order, then they brought you your food. It was quite delicious. Never been to a restaurant quite like that before. We also saw a protest/demonstration (not sure what it was about but it was pretty crazy). A couple of us walked around the mall before making our way back to Tinbillys. It was a long but very much relaxing day.

Notables:
Popper: juice box (will be incorporate in my everyday vocab)

Last Day on Straddie

Another great sunset

June 3, 2010

Location: Stradebroke Island

I can’t believe it has been a whole week…actually I can (I am slightly surprised that it has only been a week). I have done so much this past week and I am ready for the new places to explore in the next couple of days. Today is our last day on Straddie. I managed to fit in going to a couple of art galleries (of the aboriginal people… I can write more about them later when I have more time). We also went to the historical museum. It was pretty awesome as well. They had a series of cottages that you could go into and each one was a replication from the housing of the first asylum on the island. The cottages had a bunch of first’s artifacts (for instance the first mail boxes on the island, and the first phones and phone insulators). They even had the top jaw bone of a sperm whale (they are humongous) that washed up on the north shore in 2001. The people that ran the museum were also very interesting (they shared a lot of stories about the aboriginal culture and traditions). One lady also let us go through the museum for free (it originally cost like 3 dollars but half of our group didn’t bring money…we were going to walk back to get some when she insisted on us just to come in and have a look). She took a great interest in how we liked the island (compared to America) and what else we were going to see while here. Most of the Aussies I have met so far have been very kind and eager to share their world with us, so much different than Americans. After our final walk around town (I didn’t want to miss anything) we went back to the research station. This afternoon, we had our group presentations on our research we have been studiously working on for the past few days. Our project went well, even though we didn’t have any significant data. I enjoyed listening to other groups projects. We all have been bouncing ideas off of each other all week which results in getting bits and pieces of each project, it was nice for everything to come all together in the end. After the presentations we went down to a local pub and watched the sun set while some enjoyed some drinks in celebration of the first complete research project. I am slightly torn that we are leaving this wonderful station and island in the morning. I have enjoyed my time here. We have had perfect sunsets and incomparable views of the water as we sat on the patio enjoying an afternoon tea. The stars at night light up the sky like never before. We did have our fare share of rainy days but the sunsets always made up for our hatred of Mother Nature. It’s hard to leave a place like this behind but there are many exciting adventures that lie ahead. I can’t wait to tell you guys all about them. Until then, Cheers!!

Notables:
Since we are traveling, and leaving this wonderful place with free internet, I do not know when I will post my upcoming blogs. But I will still document every moment, so keep an eye out for any updates.