Thursday night, our group and the Lewis & Clark group went for a night snorkel in the harbor. We each had a glowstick rubberbanded to our snorkel (yellow for students, red for instructors), and carried an underwater flashlight. We swam out in groups of three buddy pairs plus one instructor/tutor. Myself, Monica, Brianna, Megan, Joseph and Kent were with Ian (the instructor who runs our program). The water was chilly when I got in; I am one of the few students who doesn’t have a wetsuit (I haven’t been diving, so I wasn’t given one). I was wearing my rash guard underneath my stinger suit like usual, though, and was plenty warm after we started swimming around for a bit. The weather was pretty good, and the waves weren’t too huge. We swam out pretty far – all the way around the shipwreck near the harbor entrance. Kent spotted an octopus. It was red, and was maybe the size of a grapefruit. Ian soon had it swimming around, and it latched onto his torch! We also saw 12 adult turtles, both greens and loggerheads. There was also a baby turtle attracted to our flashlights. So cute! We saw a lot of sleeping fish of varying sizes, a couple of corals with their polyps out, and a lot of small fish, shrimp, and plankton (again, attracted to our lights). The water became turbid very quickly, and sometimes it was hard to see even with up to 6 or 7 flashlights shining around. I was very glad to be out there in a group. It would be pretty scary to be out in the water alone at night; you could get lost incredibly easily.
On Friday night, we participated in a turtle release. A group of baby turtles had been incubated in Melbourne, and then shipped back to Heron Island for release into the ocean. Our group got to go down to the beach with the research station staff, and help place the turtles in the sand and direct them towards the water. They were very lethargic due to being cold, and seemed confused. I got permission to pick them up and turn them around when they went the wrong way, and I was personally allowed to pick up the last straggler and wade out into the water with it. Only one turtle in 1,000 will survive to adulthood, but it was still exciting to watch the baby turtles swim away.
We finished our research projects, and gave presentations on Friday as well. Based on my group's research, there is no halo effect with regards to meiofauna around coral bommies - rather, the meiofauna distribution seems to be current-based. My research group (lab component of the halo effect project; 4 people) was nicely surprised with being told we had done an especially fantastic job at our research, and each of us was given a $10 credit towards items in the gift shop!
The boat ride back to Gladstone was MUCH better than the boat ride there. I took 2 seasickness medication pills, and slept for the entire ride due to the side effect of drowsiness. The two-hour nap did me a lot of good!
As bill would say - "BaYbees!"
ReplyDeleteHow small were they?
I am very glad there were no jellyfish problems!