Surfing at Spot X and Diving at Byron Bay

I'll have some writing up soon but here are some pictures for now:

Remote Area Dive Dive/Camp Safari to Orpheus and Pelorus Island

The weekend after spring break was our dive trip with Remote Area Dive to the Palm Islands. The group was Alex, Kevin, Charlie, Jared, and me. Andrew had to drop out because of lack of funds, and Steve was actually in the hospital for three days after getting bit by a spider so he couldn’t go either. Still, we had a good group and enough people to get a sweet discount. Alex, Kevin, and Charlie were even able to get their Advanced Open Water Certification for only 50 bucks. Not bad.

Christmas Tree Worms

Basket Star

If you want to read my full log of the dives you can do it here:

The short version is that the trip was a lot of fun. We did six dives over two days (including a night dive), and camped on one of the islands at night. The coral at the Palm Islands was like nowhere else I had ever seen on the Great Barrier Reef. It wasn’t that the coral cover was outstanding (it was pretty good), but the diversity and different types of coral on the reefs was really cool. We were seeing coral and things that I didn’t even know what they were. It’s amazing how different the reefs can be even within one reef system like the Great Barrier Reef. Highlights of the dives were tons of nudibranchs, basket stars, thousands of jellyfish, an octopus, lobsters, a “bug”, a whitetip reef shark, a scrawled filefish (one of my favourite fish), a juvenile boxfish, a sea turtle, a couple juvenile lionfish, a wobbegong, and A GIANT CUTTLEFISH!!! I’ve been dying to see one of those since I’ve been here and finally we spotted one. Jared and I made a good buddy team pointing stuff out to each other, and we both had the best dives we’ve ever done in terms of breath control and conserving air. We even lasted a full 60 minutes on one dive, which is the longest bottom time I’ve ever had. Anyway check out the ScubaRadio site for more info on the dives and for sure take a look at the rest of the pictures because there are some pretty good ones.

Dive Buddy Jared

Giant Cuttlefish! It's amazing how much it changed its color and texture. Check out the video:

Heaps of jellyfish in the water.

And of course, Rocky Balboa:

GOANNA

I left out something from the Cape Trib trip because I thought it was cool enough to have its own post and pictures. Within five minutes of setting up our tents, we heard some rustling around in the forest on the side of the camp. It was definitely big, so we were pretty intrigued and went over to investigate. It turned out to be a monitor lizard (goanna) that was a good 5 feet long. Seriously the thing was huge, it looked like a dinosaur. Walked just like a komodo dragon too, it was really cool. Naturally we chased it and it climbed up a tree. Turns out it hung around all week, and basically every time we came back to our camp it was laying around our tent basking or crawling through our neighbours’ trash. I’m guessing it likes to hang around there and roots through people’s garbage for food. Definitely one of the cooler wild animals I have seen though.

Cape Spring Break Part 2: Camping in Cape Tribulation

Since we returned from our field trip on a Wednesday we still had a good four and a half days of break left. Alex, Kevin, and I had plans to pick up a car Wednesday afternoon and make the 7.5 hour trip up to Cape Tribulation. Cape Tribulation is where the rainforest meets the reef, and is the only place in the world that has two World Heritage areas in the same location (the Wet Tropics and the Great Barrier Reef). After getting pack from the field trip and realizing we didn’t have any food, beer, or coolers to hold them (let alone any camping equipment yet) we decided to spend Wednesday getting supplies and wake up at 3 am and make the drive up. The drive was uneventful and went quickly because everything north of Cairns was absolutely beautiful. We set up camp at our beachside campsite—me in my $12 dollar 1.5 person tent and Kevin and Alex in their borrowed mansion 4 person tent complete with fold out spa. The first day we spent most of the time hanging out on the beach (a 25 second walk from our tents) and snorkelling out on the reef. The rainforest really does go right up to the beach, its amazing to be swimming in the ocean and see mountain jungle right behind the beach. We also did a short 2 mile hike in the rainforest on a track near our site. Didn’t see anything too noteworthy but it was still pretty cool.

The beach at our campsite

Reef to Beach to Rainforest

Exploring the jungle

That night we decided to go back to the hiking track with our headlamps to try to see if we could find some cool stuff at night. Maybe not the best decision. Something about being in the middle of the jungle when its pitch black and you can hear things moving all around you but can’t see them is pretty creepy. Who would have thought? Alex’s big scare came when he was attacked by some type of killer bee swarm, although I’m convinced it could have been a moth. I definitely had the biggest fright of the night when I thought I was being stealthy and sneaking up on a lizard. I was walking and had noticed my light reflect off of the eye of something sitting against a tree so went in closer to investigate. Upon closer inspection I still couldn’t figure out what it was, but it hadn’t moved so I figured it was a lizard camouflaged in to the bark. “Ha you fool, you think I can’t figure out you’re there just because I can’t see you, I’ll show you”. I went in real close to get a good look at it so I could catch it. It was only when my face was about 2 inches from the bark that the lizard came in to focus. In the form of a spider the size of my hand jumping at my face. After that we were all a bit jumpy for the rest of the night hike, but we did see some cool stuff: bandicoots, an echidna, kangaroo rats, more behemoth spiders, stick bugs, tree frogs, and lots of cane toads.

The spider that tried to eat my face

Nasty

The next day we decided to do some exploring and check out a swimming hole in the jungle that we had heard was a short walk away. Four hours and a cranky Alex later we finally got there. It was a pretty cool spot. There were tons of fish so it was cool to snorkel, and I caught a turtle. Definitely not worth walking six miles though. Regardless, we hung out for a while swimming and ate our lunches. We walked back along the beach, rock and coral hopping. This was the coolest part of the day for me because I saw an octopus and a couple moray eels come out of their hiding spots as the evening high tide was coming in.

Our pristine jungle swimming whole that we hiked 5 miles to get to

Sweet tree

Moray going for an afternoon swim

After our long Friday, Saturday was all about being lazy on the beach and a little more snorkelling. The offshore reef was pretty good, and we found the biggest Porites coral any of us had ever seen. Easily 7 meters high and 7 meters wide. A coral like that is probably a thousand years old, pretty amazing. We also saw a few good size remoras to finish up the day. Sunday we packed up early to make our drive back home. Props to Kevin for getting us home alive, he managed to drive on the left side of the road with only a few minor slip-ups. The trip overall was awesome, the area was beautiful and we saw some really cool stuff. Not to mention that we ate like kings—sausages, eggs, baked beans, beer, canned fruit, chunky soup, and wafers for every meal. Good way to spend spring break.

Spring Break Part 1 - Coral Reef Ecology Field Trip

So two weeks ago I got to go for my second spring break of the year. For the first half of break I had a field trip to the Orpheus Island Research Station, about two hours north of Townsville, for my Coral Reef Ecology class. This field trip was one of the main reasons I wanted to study at JCU, because I thought it would be awesome to get some experience working out in the field in a place like the Great Barrier Reef. Can't beat that. That being said, I'm not going to lie but going into the field trip I was a little disappointed that I didn't have the whole week off and couldn't go to places like New Zealand like a lot of my friends did. Luckily though, by the end of the field trip I was really glad I did it and had an awesome time. It ended up being exactly what I was hoping.

We left for the field trip on Saturday afternoon and had all day Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday to spend on the island collecting and analyzing some field data. Each day consisted of about 3 hours of snorkeling in the morning and then 3 more hours of snorkeling in the afternoon. We did five total research exercises and investigated zonation, competition, morphology, partial mortality, and recruitment on the coral reefs off the island. We used transect lines for each of the studies and ran several replicates over different zones to see how the variables changed across different zones. I really enjoyed the research we did, it was cool to be a part of legitimate data collection. At night we analyzed all of the data and went over results, with the idea that we will pick one of the studies to write up as a field report (it ended up being competition).

Another bonus of the field trip was that Alex and I usually finished our data collection with at least 2 hours to spare, meaning that we had loads of free time to swim around and take pictures. The reefs around the island were really nice, and we saw some really cool stuff. The first day I spotted an epaulette shark, but unluckily didn't have my camera on me because we were gathering data. Other cool stuff throughout the weekend included a flathead, scorpionfish, tons of awesome nudibranchs, clownfish (although I missed out on a classic nemo shot), and a moray eel that I tried to tempt out of its hole by wiggling my finger in front of its face (I got chastised for it later).

Night time was already fun because Alex, Kevin, and I spent the time exploring the tidal flats of the island. There were dozens of baby blacktip reef sharks that came in to swim in the shallow water at night, and even more rays. We turned over coral and rocks to see what kinds of cool and weird stuff we could find. The first night I found an octopus, which was probably the highlight for me as it crawled over my foot when I blocked its path. We also found garden eels and caught mudskippers and crabs. I tried to catch a crab to throw at Alex, but karma got me when it pinched my finger so hard that I tore its arm off.

Ghost Crab

Sweet nudibranch

On the last day they took us to an area called the "clam gardens" to snorkel around for a bit. A while back there was a giant clam aquaculture site somewhere on Orpheus, and when the study was over they dumped all of the clams on this one area of the island. Years later there are now thousands of giant clams in this one area, literally lined shell to shell. Each of the clams are at least 3-4 feet big and weigh several hundred pounds. It is crazy to see nothing but giant clams as far as the eye can see, and a neat contrast to all the coral we had been studying before.

Thousands of Giant Clams

Overall, awesome trip and I definitely learned a lot about practicing research in the field. It ended up being exactly how I was hoping and we had a pretty good time.

Flathead

There were phosflourecent worms in the mud!

Brief update

This past weekend I took a PADI Rescue Diver certification course on Magnetic Island. Trip plans have been changing but a lot of exciting things are coming up:

-Next week I am going on 4 day field trip to the orpheus island research station for Coral Reef Ecology, where we will be snorkeling/SCUBA diving to collect data on the coral reefs around the island
-Immediately after the field trip I am going on 4/5 day trip to Cape Tribulation with two buddies to camp on the beach, snorkel, and hike in the rainforest
-Two weeks from now is my weekend dive/camp safari to the palm islands with 6 other friends
-Three weeks from now is the 4 day backpacking and camping trip on the Thorsborne trail of Hinchinbrook Island

After that, Papa and dad come to visit and we will be doing plenty more awesome things while they are here.


I'll add some more details about the rescue course and upcoming trips soon (SO MANY RESEARCH PAPERS TO WRITE)



Catch yas

Whitsundays Pictures

So I figured out how to put a slideshow in to one of these posts.  I feel so much smarter now.  Now I won't have to put a bunch of pictures on the actual blog.  Whatever.  Anyway I will start adding these in from now on, for good measure here are the slideshows for the pictures I have so far.  


EDIT: Wow this actually looks way awesomer than I thought it would, wish I had figured this out earlier.

Whitsundays

Rainforest/Wallaman Falls

Yongala

Wheeler Reef 1

Wheeler Reef 2