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!
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