Today is a sad day, its our last day. I made it to the morning snorkel for the first time in a few days, it was pretty cold. We saw a bunch of the fish. We had breakfast, porridge of course. Maggie also made pancakes and they were delicious despite her worries. We went on our last outer reef snorkel, this time we went across the channel to wistari reef. It was really cool but it had been hit by some storms so the coral was a little beat up.
0 Comments
Once again today was really chill. I mostly just worked on finishing up my group project. We got it done! We went out to the outer reef again, which was really cool. I didn't wear a wetsuit this time so I was a little bit cold but it was much easier to dive down and look at the reef. There was a manta ray sighting but I wasn't close enough to see it before it scurried off. Because I was able to dive better I could get a good look at all of the super cool coral out there. The children left today, so the island is super quiet. Dinner was amazing, we had steak and potatoes. Dessert was a chocolate pudding with vanilla ice cream on top and it was amazing. I think Maggie might have been saving the good food for when she only had to cook for 15 people. I guess a new group is coming out tomorrow from New Zealand so hopefully they are nice.
Today was relatively chill, I missed morning swim again so I just got up and showered. When people got back from morning swim we went and kept working on our project, I spent a long time looking at worms. I did find a funky looking little blob with tentacles, Trisha said it might be a coral polyp. After finishing up our sediment samples we went on a trip to the outer reef, it was really cool. I saw those fish from finding nemo, the old grumpy fish with the scar. We had aour last dinner tonight with the high schoolers, so by tomorrow night the island will be peaceful and quiet again.
Today was really uneventful, I missed the morning snorkel and the snorkel when Chris went out with Andrew. I started analyzing the sediment cores we collected yesterday. I worked on that for a little while and then I went for a walk out to the other side of the island with some of the group. After we got back I looked at some more sand and found a few worms in the samples. I did go for the afternoon snorkel but the water was really cloudy so I wasn't able to see as much as usual. I got to see a few turtles which is always really cool. Dinner was pretty good, I loved the mashed potatoes.
Today was really chill, on the morning swim we saw a lion fish! Now that we are just working on our group projects we didn't have a lot of structured things to do today, I'm in a group with Chris so we went and collected samples for low tide, and we are going to attempt to collect high tide samples. After lunch we had a lecture and then we went over to the resort store and got some snacks. I got a soda and some chicken flavored chips were a little weird. We went and ate our snacks on the jetty. We saw a bunch of cool stuff and we got to see more eagle rays jump, one of them even did a double jump. There was a giant spider in the bathroom building today that some of the group have started calling peter. I took a nap today while we were waiting for low tide and it was wonderful. We had ice cream for dessert tonight and they called the sprinkles hundreds and thousands which was a little weird. The ice cream was super good though.
I got stung by a jellyfish today. The morning swim was really cool this morning, it was the first day I got to actually see the wreck because last time I swam out there my goggles were all fogged up. On the swim back from the wreck we swam through a herd? of jellyfish. They were really cool to see and there were turtles swimming around eating them but I did get stung on my legs a few times. Breakfast was amazing we had the porridge and even though we've had it every day it was still amazing. After breakfast we had a really cool lecture, these lectures are really fun because I don't get to learn about any of this in my normal classes. We also went and did a really cool citizen science activity to measure the health of the coral on the north side of the island. We had a lot of free time today that I wasn't used to so I wandered around the island with a few of my classmates. It's really a pretty small island, it only took us like 45 minutes to walk around the island. I bought a really nice hoodie from the research station today, a bunch of other people had also bought the same hoodie so we went and took pictures in them around the island. Sunset was really cool today, from the dock we saw a bunch of things. An eagle jumped out of the water and we watched a few sharks make laps around the dock area. I also saw a bunch of really cute sea turtle come up for air.
We went to the outer reef today, a place called blue pools. I got to see tons of fish that I hadn't seen in the lagoon. I saw some anemone fish, some unicorn fish, and a trumpet fish. I didn't go on the morning swim today which I'm kind of bummed about because I heard it was really cool, but it did mean I had a dry wetsuit for the boat ride out to blue pools. The plate coral out at blue pools was huge, it was really cool to see all of the corals mixed together because the lagoon is mostly staghorn coral. When we got back to the island I went swimming again with Ed and Trisha and a few other people and it was super cool, I saw a cone shell on the seabed, I think I saw it blink. The tide was going out so we had to run back to the shore before it got too shallow to swim over the coral. I almost made it but right towards the end I kind of punched a staghorn, it didn't break the skin though so I'm good. After lunch we had our ID test which I was pretty nervous about, but it ended up going pretty well. There were only a couple of fish I couldn't identify. After the test I sat outside and talked with my classmates and it was really fun to get to know them more. We then finished our lab from yesterday, I made the graph though I had to make it a few times because I kept messing it up. We got it turned in though and now we are done with the labs. Dinner was really good tonight.
We got up early this morning to get started on a lab, we were running transect lines across the sea floor to count fish abundance. This was a fun lab, I got to see lots of fish even if the camera didn't end up seeing them. I got tossed around by the ocean a little bit while I was winding out the transect line, I couldn't use my snorkel because it kept filling up with water. Then when I was running the camera back down the transect line my snorkel filled up with water again so I had to hold my breath until I finished filming.
We went back down to the lagoon at low tide to perform the same lab, unfortunately we didn't see many fish, I think we might have scared most of them away. When we watched the video back we saw one fish during the low tide video. I spent a long time studying today for our fish ID test tomorrow. I feel pretty good about it but we'll see, there are still a few fish I don't know. It was a pretty chill day, I went out to the dock to watch the sunset with a few people. We got to see an eagle ray jump out of the water! Dinner was pretty good, it was a little bit spicy though. Tomorrow we are going to the outer reef to see some different underwater ecosystems and I'm really excited. Today felt really long, but we did a lot of stuff, I got up first thing to go snorkeling in the boat channel. Unfortunately we didn't make it too far because my partners snorkel broke and he couldn't breathe. So we got out and went back to our rooms to get ready for breakfast. After breakfast we had a lecture on the different phyla we will see around Heron Island. It was pretty interesting and I'm starting to recognize some of them around here. Around lunch time like 40 high schoolers showed up, but Maggie let up into lunch a little early so we could beat the youths to the food. After lunch we walked over to the other side of the island to perform another lab. On the way there we passed under some Pisonia trees, these trees make super sticky seeds that trap and kill birds. The birds then fall and decompose on the ground so that their nutrients can then be used by the tree. For the lab we were collecting some core samples to measure the micro invertebrates at different distances from the coral. When we got the samples back to the lab we looked at the sand under microscopes to find and little creatures.
After working on the sand for a while we went for a swim in the lagoon, I saw tons of cool fish and sea turtles. Under the dock where all of the rays like to sit there were a ton of the high schoolers swimming and they spooked the rays and they all moved as a herd and it was really freaky to watch. Now that the high schoolers are here we have to share the showers with them, which is kind of a bummer because before we almost had one shower per person for us guys. The youths are running around, which has made the island seem a little less peaceful than it did. This morning we got up and went for an early swim in the boat channel, my goggles fogged up so I couldn't see much for the first half but once I made it back to shore and got rid of the fog I was able to see much better. I saw 3 lemon sharks while we were out and tons of cowtail rays. Then we had a lecture on the workings of coral that was super interesting, I didn't about any of it before. We had morning tea today which was something I've never done before, but the cake was amazing. We had our first lab today, we were measuring the benthic cover of the lagoon around Heron Island. It was really cool but getting the line straight against the incoming tide was really difficult. After we got cleaned up we went and watched the sunset off the dock and there were tons of rays sitting under the dock and swimming around. There were sharks and sea turtles around as well, even when I've been to the ocean on other occasions I've never seen this many sea creatures around.
|