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.