Lets just start by saying that I am very much not ready to leave this island.... This morning snorkel was just a solid one. Nothing crazy happened (besides almost getting hit by a boat haha) but it was just all the fun normal characters with schools of fish, a handful of sharks, and some cute turtles. There was one moment though where we were swimming over a sleeping turtle when all of a sudden a black tip swam across in front of us. Having them both right in the same frame of vision made it just feel surreal. Right after was our fourth and last outer reef snorkel!! We went to a different reef that's the next one over from heron called Wistari! It was beautiful. We jumped out of the boat and it was just complete ocean blue everywhere you looked underwater which was the craziest but coolest feeling. I think they said we were like 20 m deep...? Grateful I can float haha. There was a new variety of coral over there which was fun to see and a bunch of bright colorful fish swimming around the soft corals. Before we had to head back to shore we also got dropped off at this place called Heron Bommie which is this huge tower of coral. And that was stunning. Massive groupers were swimming around, a couple turtles and a white tip were napping, and the coral was spectacular. The Great Barrier Reef really is incredible. After we got back and rinsed off, it was presentation time for our group projects. It was the Heron Island Research Symposium. Definitely a lil nerve wracking but cambrey and I managed alright! Even if we messed up the stats analysis a lil bit...but alls well because we ended up getting the award for best presentation during the lil award ceremony like an hour later! We didn't discover anything toooo crazy about microplastics on heron island but it was a really fun project to get to do and organize all by ourselves. The rest of the day really was just spent in the water. The whole class went out for a quick swim across the reefs on North beach before the tide completely went out. It was a little stressful to be swimming over the top when we were less than an arms length away from the coral. Required some very creative and shallow swimming. But! since we were so close we got to see all the little creepy crawlies and small fish that are usually too small to see when it's high tide. I love looking in the nooks and crannies of the coral to see whats hiding in it. I also found the oddest looking creature I've seen all trip while swimming through. After looking through an ID book, I think it's called a conspicuous sea cucumber...? It was so weird. It was maybe like 3 feet long and was wound through the staghorn coral. At the end of it was this tendril mouth looking thing that was quite creepy Since the channel doesn't open for swimming until 5, a few of us just sat on the jetty for a lil bit before jumping right back into the water for our last evening snorkel! Tonight's sunsets was one of the most stunning ones I've seen since being on the island and I like to think it was the islands little goodbye to us. There were a few big white tips taking naps as we swam out and coming back a hawksbill turtle swam right in front of us! It got close enough to me I felt like I could touch it. If you've never seen a turtle poke its little head up to get air, you need to put it on your bucket list because it is absolutely adorable. It must've had something itchy because it kept trying to use its flipper to scratch. All in all just a super cute turtle that was a perfect maybe last encounter. I seriously can't not express how overwhelmingly grateful I am that I got to be a part of this class. Every day has just made me so incredibly happy and I can't think of a single moment I haven't loved what we were doing (minus the fact of being freezing getting in in the morning haha). Getting to learn just a little bit about what marine biologist do for research was a ton of fun and all 14 people here are a blast. All the fish, animals, and odd creatures here are fascinating, and I still kinda can't believe that I've really gotten to swim with/see all of them. Never did I ever think swimming with turtles and sharks on a coral reef would just be a typical daily occurrence for me. This is definitely going to the top of the list of coolest things I was able to do in college. Leaving the island tomorrow is going to kinda be the worst...I love the people here and I love this island. Thanks USU for letting this program exist and letting me come along:) our last morning tea time:/
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I feel like the reef was really showing off today. I got to see like all of the big things that it has to offer, and all just in our lil boat channel! During the morning swim, we saw all three turtle species that live around here! (Green, Loggerhead, and Hawksbill). Hawksbill isn't crazy common to see around here, so the fact that we got to see him, plus the other two, was so so cool. The completionist in me was quite excited about it. There was also this line of three spotted eagle rays that swam right in front of me on the way back. Those little guys still fascinate me every time I see them. There's also these porcupine stingrays that have been hanging out around here that are fun to look at. Apparently they're pretty rare internationally, but we have a few of them here in the channel! I love finding things here, only to learn later that they're actually kinda rare Right after breakfast, it was right back in the water! This time for another outer reef trip which made putting on the cold, still wet wetsuits worth it. Most of this swim I just spent watching the different coral formations. There are some plate corals out there that grow to be HUGE! There were also all these honkers of colorful parrotfish swimming about which were fun to look at. I finally got to see one of them poop too haha because fun fact: most sand in tropical areas is just parrotfish/sea cucumber poop! A fun lil fact taken away from this class. Braden managed to have a manta ray swim right next to him, but it popped out of distance before anyone else could spot it sadly:/ luckily he got a pretty good video of it so we could all kindaaa see it Cambrey and I practiced giving our project presentation on the beach this afternoon! Definitely one of the top locations I've ever gotten to do homework on. Wish us luck tomorrow that we'll be able to sum up the story of microplastics on Heron Island somewhat coherently. I'd just gotten out of the water so notice the large mask mark across my forehead in the picture above. Sunset snorkel was filled with alllll the sharks! I saw quite a few white tips sleeping around as we swam and there were a few black tips swimming around us too! Grateful the sharks here aren't aggressive or threatening because they are pretty fascinating to watch swim. There were also still a bunch of turtles around the channel. There were some that were swimming around all sleepy and bumping into each other and it just made me smile watching them. I realized my last two blog posts have been titled around turtles but I just love them every time I manage to spot one in the water. Which is pretty lucky because I don't think I've ever gotten in the water once here without seeing at least one turtle. Annnddd the island blessed us with another stunner of a sunset. Heron is pretty cool:)
During this episode of morning snorkels, I got to watch the most adorable thing. A little green sea turtle made himself all comfy in a coral bed and settled all his fins below him. Then he looked up a bit and yawned. I had never thought about turtles yawning but it was the best thing I've ever seen. I've always thought the turtles sleeping on the coral was cute, but apparently them falling asleep is even better. I also have a new favorite fish to add to my list of memories here. Right next to the shipwreck, the last few mornings there have been these two yellow long-finned batfish that are always swimming right with each other. Apparently they're pair bonded, meaning they're bonded for life! As we're swimming out, it makes me so happy to just stop and watch them swim along for a little fit. Today's main theme was writing! Since Cambrey and I have gotten through analyzing all our sediment cores, we spent all this morning writing up our project report, which luckily since we did a ton of research on microplastics wasn't too difficult to write! Getting an abstract to only 100 words and the whole thing over 1500 words was a little more tricky but we figured it out. Hopefully in the end it all makes sense. We got to go on another outer reef snorkel today!!! I know I've probably said this about so many things, but I think I've decided that these are the very top thing on my list of favorite parts of Heron. It's just so cool swimming out there!! The coral structures are stunning and it always feels like it shouldn't be a reality that I'm actually getting to be right there. Words just can't describe how beautiful it is. While we were out there, we found this absolutely MASSIVE pufferfish! I've only ever seen those cute little ones, so I'd forgotten that they can get that big! And it wasn't even puffed up so I can't imagine how large it gets when that happens. We also saw a few white tip reef sharks which are always fun to spot.
Surprise surprise, today started with another bright and early morning snorkel!! Anytime I want to just stay curled up in bed and ignore the alarm, I just remind myself that I'm only gonna be on Heron Island once and I need to soak it all up. Soooo I always go haha. And I don't think I've ever once regretted it.
While some of the class went on a dive this morning (just those lucky ones who are scuba certified), we all decided to go on a lil walk around the island. Naturally we stopped at the new wind free spot we discovered and just soaked up the warm sun for a minute. I've yet to get the awful sunburn I was warned about before coming to Australia so I guess that's a good thing! Even though we walk the exact same little nature trail every single day I still love it. The island just keeps on staying pretty! The majority of my day again was spent looking into a microscope trying to count all the little microplastics in it. Fortunate for the reef, but slightly unfortunate for my project, Heron Island so far actually has very little microplastics that we're finding! We just have one more round of sediment core samples to go through, but I don't think we're gonna find a whole lot of them. Cambrey and I would work through a couple samples and then walk our little trail to give our eyes a break before going back to analyze another couple. You don't realize how bright a microscope light is until you're staring straight into it for a couple of hours. Evening snorkel to watch the sunset rounded out the day once again! I'm gonna miss when my view to watch the sunset isn't right in the ocean off an island. I posted this and then realized I forgot to give the title ANY context...whoops! basically, whenever we go out reef walking to collect our sediment cores, Cambrey points out the little brain corals when we pass them and it makes me laugh every time. And now when I'm swimming, that goes through my mind each time I see a brain coral.
First picture is the eel I found this morning snorkel...second picture is my reaction when I realized I was looking at an eel haha. They're pretty cool looking but they definitely catch me off guard anytime I see them sticking out of the rocks as I'm swimming by. One of my least favorite things that's ever greeted me at 5:50 in the morning was a massive spider that had decided to build its whole web attached to all of our hanging wetsuits...that was this morning. Felt like the most stressful game of Jenga to take turns pulling down our wetsuits, seeing who was going to yank the spider in our direction. The rest of the day was honestly really chill. We started working on our group projects that are going to take up the majority of the rest of the trip. Cambrey and I decided to look at the distribution of microplastics in different sand patches around Heron Island. Since getting sediment cores is a little tricky at high tide, we spent the whole morning reading research articles about what microplastics are, what creates them, and why they're dangerous. There's some wild stuff! Apparently viruses can ride on the little pieces of plastic and it extends the longevity of the virus to up to triple its normal life. Microplastics are kind of the worst. I didn't know too much about them before this class but I have a feeling that by the end of it I'm going to know wayyyy too much Some of the day was broken up with walks around the little trails Heron has, soaking up the warm sun, and finding the most stunning part of the beach! The resort side doesn't get hit with the wind like our research side does so sitting there was quite peaceful and pretty since we weren't getting blown around. Mine and Cambrey's sample collection was so easy. Kind of blows my mind that I got to walk around a stunning island in my swimsuit, looking at pretty coral and fishes, and grab a couple sediment cores from a coral reef all for a university class. Best class I've ever taken. We took some chunks of sand from around reef patches, rocks, and everywhere in between. My afternoon then consisted of staring into a microscope to find all these lil colorful pieces of plastic that should not be there. Another fun round of Where's Waldo. We got through 2/10 samples which means tomorrow will be spent almost entirely (minus the morning and evening snorkels) looking into a microscope with tweezers. Tonight's sunset swim was incredibly murky. I'd just be swimming a long when all of a sudden it would feel like the fish would jump out of coral. I'm sure they really were just swimming there the whole time, but I couldn't see them until they were just a few feet in front of my face. Made it just a little bit eery when you're swimming about with no idea of what might be surrounding you. We did manage to spot a massive Loggerhead swimming right next to us so that's a highlight! Plus the sunset was another stunner so that is always always a win. Annnddd we found some massive sea cucumber lumps on the sea floor which they're always funny to look at.
Today we learned that the jellyfish here do in fact sting...whoops. Luckily, it just feels a bit like a bee sting and not much worse. I think it was more so today just because the amount of them in the water like tripled! I'd just be swimming along a feel a little sharp prick on my leg or face. yay for benadryl! It was totally worth it though because there were a bajillion turtles out again and we got to watch them chomp on all the little jellies and it was adorable. And the sunrise was stunning so double worth it. After a quick breakfast it was right back in the water...which meant my wetsuit was still VERY wet from the morning swim. Getting those suits on is already an adventure, so add in the fact that it was quite wet? required for lot's of wiggling and jumping to get it all the way on. I'm sure it's quite entertaining for anyone watching us all wriggle into our wetsuits. The reason we were going out again was for coral watch! It's this really cool citizen science project to monitor the health of coral reefs around the world. Anyone who wants to can buy one of their little color code tablets and contribute to the study! We just went out with our little cards and swam around picking coral patches in our path. The card has different color gradients with labels that you hold up to the coral and determine what color level it is at. A healthy coral is reallyyyy dark. A struggling coral is light and bleached is white. So We just swam around a bit, recorded some of the coral around Heron Island, and added it to the world database for the project. Science is cool. After a quick lecture on some of the fish here on the reef, the rest of the day was veryyyy chill! We almost didn't know what to do with ourselves with all the free time. A group of us ended up walking around the whole perimeter of the island. Made me realize just how small Heron really is once I saw how quickly we could walk around the whole thing. Would be quite difficult to get too terribly lost while here as it's just one little circle. My mom created this fun little tradition for my family where every time we go on a trip around a beach, we get a new beach book! I think it was started to make sure all her kids enjoyed reading, but it's turned into one of my favorite traditions. Even though she wasn't coming with me for this trip, she still surprised me with a beach book. So with a good chunk of my free time, I went out onto the beach and read my book! Mother nature decided to be kind too and the usually present wind was nonexistent. It made me so happy. Some of us all got matching Heron Island Research Station hoodies! Naturally we had to get a picture:) Our little group claimed the edge of the jetty tonight and got to watch the sunset in a way that felt like we were directly over the ocean. Feels a little precarious like you might lose your phone into the deep but it makes for a pretty stunning view. A little black tip reef shark and eagle ray kept making appearances for us too to make it even better. I love this lil island and all the things that call it home. Grateful they're willing to share it with us Americans.
I almost didn't get up this morning because my bed was toooo comfy BUT I am SO so so glad that I did because it was amazing. First off, there were fifty bajillion turtles that kept swimming right by us. I thought I was going to have to really search for turtles when I was swimming while I was here but I was so wrong. A huge group of teenagers that are staying on the resort had all jumped into the water and scared allll the turtles right towards us. Since we were a bit calmer they just swam right through. It was so fun. I don't think I'll ever get sick of swimming with those guys. My biggest highlight of the day was that I got to HOLD a JELLYFISH!!!! We were swimming back to shore when all of a sudden we were just surrounded in this cloud of cone jellies. Naturally, I was panicked at first haha but once I saw my professor holding one up to me that fear completely dissipated. Apparently these are the kind that rarely ever have a sting, and if they do it just leaves a lil rash. So I spent the next like 10 minutes just holding and poking all these little jelly friends. Quite literally a dream come true and just made my love for jellyfish grow even more. THEN! The whole class all went out on our outer reef dive! We took this lil red boat out on the water past the channel which was like a lil ocean rollercoaster. Feeling grateful I've never been one to get motion/sea sick. The outer reef was one of the most beautiful places I've ever gotten to see. It looked like a completely different world with all these varieties of coral and colorful fish creating these new landscape that is just hidden under the blue waves of the ocean. The whole time we were swimming through it, I was just amazed that I'm actually here. There was a whole new variety of fish over in this area that were different than the ones we normally see in the channel. I got to see almost all the fish from Nemo even! My fav was the Moorish Idol (who is Gil the scarred fish in finding nemo) or these funny looking yellow trumpet fish. I also found a leathery sea anemone which is one of those classic ones with all the tentacles waving about and a real life anemone fish swimming out of it (it's the picture above this!). Once I figured out that one wouldn't sting me either, me and my buddy of the day Brinley dove down to tickle it a bit. Just checking off so many things on my bucket list. One slight con of the island is that I am starting to develop a tanline across my forehead where my goggles sit...I must swim looking forward with my forehead out of the water or something. Soooo we'll see what that looks like at the end of this whole trip. After some solid last minute studying we all survived the fish test! and all did pretty darn good too actually! Now I can just enjoy getting to know all of the fish I see while swimming about without having to worry about a test:)
The rest of today has mostly just been spent writing and hanging out. We finished up the writeup for our latest fish lab and then now I'm here writing this blog! So many happy memories came from just this day alone! Hello hello again! Today felt a little bit all over the place and long so we'll see if I can remember it all. But here we go! Instead of 6 am, we woke up at 5:50! You'd think just ten minutes wouldn't feel that different, but man oh man did I feel it. It was quite the sleepy start to the morning. However, the chilly lagoon water changed that real quick! Instead of a curiosity morning snorkel around the channel like we typically do, we spent this swim collecting video footage for our latest lab study. For this one, me and my buddy Chris set up a 30 m transect line parallel to the shore along the coral beds. Swimming backwards with a dive weight and a measuring tape while trying to keep the line perfectly straight was quite the struggle bus. Then as slowwwlllyyyy as we could (to try and give the fewest amount of fish a panic attack), we each swam along the top of it while filming with a go pro. We went out later this afternoon when the tide was WAY low (like ankle deep) and filmed a similar stretch again to compare and contrast the fish abundance between high and low tides. Picture a solid hour of staring at the tiny silver blips of fish on a video screen as they dart by and trying to identify what on earth it may be. Anytime we get out of the water, regardless of what time it is, I am always FROZEN! But I apparently always have these huge grin on my face in spite of the fact that I am actually shivering. I mean kind of hard to get to upset about something when you're literally on a beautiful island in Australia Our meeting spot on the island is always the research stations touch tank. It's honestly not that crazy exciting but we've all grown to love it. It's kind of funny though because now it has almost a magnetic pull to it. Anytime we walk anywhere, we always have to stop by to check and see if anything crazy happened in the touch tank since we last checked in. So naturally we had to make sure we got a picture with our beloved favorite touch tank. Then! the COOLEST thing! Instead of the few hours of free time that I thought we were going to have, me, Cambree, and Taylor, got to go help one of the Australian researchers that's here on the island. She is working on studying these little tiny single celled organisms that grow on the algae in the lagoon. We helped her collect all the samples in the ocean and then dissected them a bit back in the lab! Took as a minute as these little organisms range anywhere from the size of a small button to the size of a pinhead. I just kept hoping I wasn't missing toooo many so I didn't skew her results. We definitely didn't do anything crazy for her but it was SO fun to get a peek into real life active marine research. Our feared fish ID test is tomorrow. Because of this, during most of our little free time breaks today, most of us could be found quizzing each other and studying the pictures of all the fishes we need to know. Every time I study it just makes me very grateful it's not a verbal exam as I completely butcher those poor Latin scientific names.
My study spot tonight though was the end of the jetty while the sun set. Soooo made even studying pretty darn cool. My love for sunsets has definitely come with me to the island. Tonight was stunning. And! To make it even better, I got to see a spotted eagle ray leap out of the water! that was one of the last things on my Heron Island "want to see" bucket list so I was pretty excited. Today's title is based off of the question I swear I asked about fifty bajillion times today... Another chilly morning snorkel started the day once again! I had to hype myself up a little bit to get in the water but hey, you're only on Heron Island once right? And I am SO glad that I did as there were TONS and tons of turtles and sharks swimming out and about this morning. There was one point where I was just floating to fix my mask and when I looked down a sea turtle was about four feet from me! I definitely shrieked a bit out of surprise/excitement. It was just so so cool!! Luckily the shock and fear of seeing a shark swim by has faded a bit already. I am also started to get a slight tan line and permanent imprint from where my mask sits as I swim...stay tuned for how bad it gets by the end of this whole adventure. Morning porridge has become the biggest blessing for me in the mornings to thaw out my soul a little bit after our morning swims. Never thought I'd be so excited to be given porridge for breakfast but here we are. This morning's lecture was centered all on invertebrates that are found in the reef! Cnidara (the jellyfish - my personal fav), annelida (worms), Echinodermata (starfish), and more. It's crazy that there are so many complex little organisms swimming, digging, and floating around in our oceans. I feel like I keep just learning more and more about how vast the existence of life really is. We quickly finished up some write ups for the benthic cover lab that we did yesterday so that we could go out and start our next one! This one was in a similar lagoon littered with reef patches and sea cucumbers. We used the transect lines again to measure 15 m (getting used to metric is an adjustment for sure) and then took samples of the sand from several different places along the line. Then we spent hours, and I mean hours, sifting through tiny pinches of the sand under a microscope to count all of the microscopic organisms living in it. Most of that time was looking at just little pebbles, but then you'd find something fancy like a little wriggling worm or a cool swirly shell and it'd make me all excited again to keep on playing natures hardest game of where's waldo. I even found a little starfish baby that was absolutely tiny! Nature is pretty cool. Tonight's sunset swim may have been one of my favorites that we've done so far. We swam on the side of the island opposite of the research station where the resort is built. Over there are these massive collections of staghorn coral with a bunch of little fishes swimming through its crevices. I kept having to pop up above the water because I've gotten so curious at figuring out what every fish I see actually is. The definite highlight of that swim though was the absolute MASSIVE turtle we stumbled on. I was just swimming a long when all of a sudden this huge guy comes swimming to my right and shocks us all. It felt like it was almost as big as I am!! I was not expecting to see a turtle that large while here but I am so pumped that I did. Ever heard of coral sunscreen? Neither had I. But it coated the top of the water with a slimy film that felt disgusting to swim through. And because we go over the top of the water, it easily coated all of us with it too...not my fav. It is now currently probably sitting all in my hair as the showers were quite full before dinner and the rest of labs....yay for corals. At least the ocean gives us cool things to look at to make up for it.
Another stellar day at Heron Island done and done:) Keep scrolling if you wanna see some more pictures of some things we've found swimming about. Second day on the island started BRIGHT and early with a 6:30 am snorkel around the boat channel. Right at the beginning of our swim, we were shown the ray cuddle puddle with TONS of cow-tail stingrays all buried in the sand next to each other. They were much much bigger than I was expecting them to be but beautiful to get to swim next to. We made it all the way out to the shipwreck at the beginning of the channel where there was quite the arrangement of colorful fish and black tip reef sharks swimming around it. I thought that a island on the southern hemisphere might be quite warm, but trust me I was feeling very grateful to be in a wetsuit this morning. I'm also incredibly grateful for the warm porridge and tea that greeted me once we got out of the water. Helped to thaw me a little bit from the chilly morning wind. I was put on dish washing duty all day today with Chris and Ella. Sounds a lot more miserable than it was because we get to use the fanciest lil dishwasher. Y'all remember the big one that the rats use in ratatouille to get all clean before beginning to cook for the restaurant? Yeah it's one of those! I don't know why but that image running through my head as I closed the lid to wash the dishes made me so smiley. I guess even on a stunning island in Australia, something as simple as a cool dishwasher can make my day. With some break time after lunch, a few of us went to find the nature trail on one end of the island, with hopes of finding the bird eating trees! Our hunt was successful, thanks to the help of a few well placed signs and even a dead bird on the side of the trail. Every time I walk around anywhere here I'm amazed at just how beautiful it all is. Our first official lab was this afternoon! We were working on measuring the type of covering found on the ocean floor surrounding the island at different distances. We were told to just partner up, grab all our gear, walk the transit line (fancy measuring tape) out to the right distance, and place the grid on the floor to measure what was there. In theory it sounds incredibly simple. In reality? Incredibly difficult. The current made Cambrey and mine's lives far from easy. But after a few snapped lines and lots of scrambling around the sand we figured it out. We probably looked as far as you can get from graceful though. Made me appreciate all that the professional marine biologists and ecologists do, which I bet was one of the purposes of the lab. Earlier that morning, we had had a lecture on the history of coral reefs, as well as the different types of coral that create them. It was honestly really fun to get to see hands on pieces of what we were learning about just a few hours back. Makes learning material a lot more exciting. There was some extra time before time before dinner so Cambrey and I squeezed back into our damp wet suits and went back out into the water. Felt kind of illegal to be getting in our own even though we had the go ahead. I think I've already decided that getting to be out in the water at sunset is one of my favorite parts of being here on the island. Swimming around to see all the colorful fish and coral and then getting to look up and see a beautiful orange sky seems almost too good to be true. I love it here. And to top off such a phenomenal day, I got to have a colorful ice cream for dessert:) |