30th of May. Today I did a snorkel session at the rise of the sun, which is 6:15 am here. It was surprisingly warm in the water and there was a ton of things to see. The harbor is place where lots of fish like to hang out but we obviously can't snorkel the harbor while ships are going in and out so we can only go in before 8 am and after 5 pm. We did our morning snorkel in the harbor and saw tons of cow head stingrays, parrot fish, and even some black tipped reef sharks. I also saw an eagle ray off in the distance but it was much faster than me so it disappeared into the haze of the ocean. If you look up a picture of Heron Island, you will most likely see that there is a shipwreck in the harbor. This ship is pretty easy to swim into and check out so I did this morning. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything super cool hiding in there. There was a ton of green turtles everywhere, I saw close to 20 myself. I also saw a wobbegong under a shelf which we had to dive down to see. Check them out, they are pretty cool. It was a good snorkel session this morning. After the snorkel, we had breakfast and then a lecture on corals. You would think corals are semi-easy to learn about but there is actually a lot of different types of coral and the history on corals is interesting. The coral we know today is actually only 100 million years old and before that, coral was different species entirely. The lecture ended about a hour before lunch so I decided to see how long it took to walk around the entire island. I grabbed a class mate and we set out. It took about 45 minutes to go around the whole island at a slow pace. There is a nice resort at one end of the island which we are forbidden to enter because we are dirty students that probably smell horrible since we are wet most of the day from swimming and snorkeling. To walk around the island, you have to pass this resort so instead we have to take a bit of a shortcut behind the resort once you reach a certain point that takes you back to the research station. Lunch was great, Pat is an awesome cook. Our first lab happened after lunch and we did some surveying of the surrounding coral and cover types in the lagoon where Heron island sits. Luckily, we didn't have to get completely immersed so it was easy to see what kind of cover there was and record it for analysis later. Cat makes fun of me for always looking like I don't want to take a selfie and she is right.
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About MeI am the guy whose name is on the top there. I am a student who graduated with a BA from USU this year and finally gave in to Dr. Atwood's pestering to go on her Heron Island Class for coral reefs. People often call me really sassy and unhappy. What they don't know is that my resting face is angry, but I am usually pretty happy. ArchivesCategories |