Our time on Heron Island was amazing. Tonight is our last night and we are enjoying ourselves and eachothers' company. We had great laughs as well as obtained great memories and adventures. I don't really want to spend my last night upon this island writing this blog. Instead, I'll leave some more of today's pics and allow the others to tell the story.
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Spent most of my day in the computer lab typing up our lab report and presentation. I decided to look up some comic relief since our presentation was a little bit bland. It turned out okay though!For the past couple of days, I have been consumed within my work. So this is my blog for June 1, 2017. For today, Sarit and I began analyzing our data. Nothing too thrilling happened besides freezing within the computer lab since Sarit likes the AC a bit too much.
You would think that recording some fish would be easy. Well, maybe... But not so much in choppy waters. Trying to keep a steady hand is near impossible. After recording three samples, I decided it would be best to just float. On the bright side, Kamp and I are nearly finished with our research project. We will soon look forward to some free time.
Kamp and I are starting on our research project! We are studying the influence of different types of benthic substrate on fish abundance and richness. I really look forward to what we come up for our results. We started our data collection today but it was a bit scary. The tide was dipping and Kamp and I had quite a few close calls with some corals while we snorkeled. At one point I had a cow head sting ray come at me but we were able to pass each other without injurty. Kamp also taught us a new game he played in Thailand. It's basically rock, paper, scissors but with more complications and violence. It is really quite fun when Dylan doesn't cheat. Anyhow, here are some of today's pictures.
We went out to the outer shelf of the reef again today except this time I had the special opportunity to swim with sea turtles! It was so awesome! I have so many great videos to share but unfortunately I can only share pictures. The first guy here (swimming) just came right up to us and checked us out.I aced my test! Though it was only worth five points, it was still a lot of memorizing. We went out to the outer reef today and I must say it was quite beautiful. I learned how to equalize my ears while diving which a must if you want to get a good look of the whole reef. I can't wait to see how my videos turned out. Other than an awesome reef swim and tests we had some lectures and Colt and I finished our lab work. All in all it was a good day. I am now going to go out to the harbor to check out some more stars. Here are some pics of Dylan's awesome man braid, compliments from Hanna.So I heard that people are actually reading these and it made me realize that maybe I should put more effort into what I write. However, I'm not the best at writing as is so we'll see how this goes. Yesterday, May 27, a citizen science group known as CoralWatch took us out to help survey corals. Basically what they do is they identify the coral based off of four types and then match the lightest and darkest colors of the color with a color pallet. They record their data and post it onto their website for both citizens and scientists to review and monitor possible coral bleaching. It's a great program! Though it wouldn't be very applicable in Utah, I do recommend it for those who are near coral reefs to participate. Kamp and I also managed to walk around the whole island in a whopping 35 minutes! It never really occurred to me how small the island was until I've literally walked all of it.
So the reason why I'm late writing this blog is because what was suppose to be a 5 minute game of Egyptian War ended up being nearly an hour. This only because of the HANNA and DYLAN became too competitive and there were some questionable game plays. Today was a pretty busy day. We spent the majority of it working on capturing video during high and low tide, changing out of gear, and reviewing said video for the slightest indication of fish. All in all, it was pretty fun. Hopefully I will get around to posting some awesome videos I took of a beautiful eel, a guitar shark, and some jellyfish. Maybe I'll maybe even eventually get around to making my mockumenturies. In the mean time, I'm going to attempt to find out how to post a video of Kam and I geeking out over video games. If it is not here, we will all know that I have failed...I finally had my first swim in Australian waters. I can't say it was as exciting as I anticipated it to be but it was still loads of fun. We went out in the jetty just before sunrise. Though the coral was not as spectacular as I had envisioned, the diversity of life was. Manta rays soared through the water with elegance. Sea turtles and guitar sharks dozed upon the soft sea beds. Fish swarmed in packs with few brave wanderers straying away. We swam out to the ship wreck where we were able to gawk at the brimming sunrise over the small island. Such brilliant colors and contrast are only found on cheesy monthly calendars.
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