I thought it would be a good idea to spend a little time each evening, during my stay on Straddie, writing about the day's activities so I could post my blog in a timely manner soon after my return to Brissy. ... if only thought was all it took. Anyway, I think it goes without saying, I didn't follow through with my idea so now I have to think back on what I did to give you the full story. I'm going to switch things up a bit this time; the day-by-day mini journal won't really work well for this trip so I'll just give you the highlights.
The first thing we did after setting our stuff down at the Moreton Bay Research Station was hop in a little power boat with our snorkel gear and go exploring around a tiny mangrove island just off the coast of Straddie. The waters of Moreton Bay are interspersed with high latitude reefs which aren't as extensive or colorful as the reefs at lower latitudes such as the GBR, but but are no less beautiful. We all swam about and poked around one of these high latitude reefs for a couple of hours before getting too cold and heading back to the station. I'm sure we were an amusing sight to any onlookers; upwards of forty people all wearing masks, snorkels, and fins swimming in every which direction and occasionally ducking below the surface.
The reef wasn't very deep; only about six feet down, but the difference between what I could see at the surface and what I saw when I dove down was quite surprising. Floating like a dead person across the surface, I could make out shapes and see some really cool brain corals maybe a few larger fish, but once I dove a few feet it was like the whole reef had transformed. There were little fish hiding in crevices and filter feeding tube worms poking their fronds out. I wouldn't say the snorkel was as spectacular as my dive off Straddie a month or so ago (mainly because I didn't see any sharks or turtles), but it was different. There are different organisms living in six foot deep waters versus 40 foot deep waters so it was a great chance for me to see the diversity of Moreton Bay.
Of course, not everything is as hard to get to. We also spent a good amount of time exploring the rocky and sandy shores near the station during low tide. There were tons of nudibranchs, bubble snails and flat worms all over the sandy shore and the rocky shore was infested with crabs. Someone caught an octopus with a net; it was quite small and didn't look like anything too exciting, but it ended up being a blue ring. You can't really tell that blue rings are blue rings until you piss them off... so, naturally, we pissed it off to find out if it was, in fact, a blue ring and it changed from brown to bright blue in an instant. (no scientists or helpless marine creatures were harmed.)
Another great way to see what lives in the sea is to go seine netting. A seine net, at least the one we used, is about thirty meters in length with floats attached to the top and a lead weight on the bottom. Basically, you stick your foot through a loop attached to the lead line then walk through the water for a time. Eventually, you, and heaps of other people to help, drag the net toward the shore and end up dragging marine organisms in with you. The seine net brought up a few small sting rays, a guitar fish, some puffers, sea cucumbers, itty bitty squids, prawns, eels, and tons of other creatures. We collected them all out of the net and after a short while of playing with them, we released them back into the ocean.
This field trip marked the start to my scientific research as a marine biologist. We were broken up into groups to come up with and conduct our own research projects. My group decided to compare the crab population densities and diversities on a rocky shore frequented by people versus a rocky shore seldom visited as well as look at the percent algal cover and number of gastropods, little snails, on each shore. Over the course of four days, my group went down to the rocky shores during morning low tide to count gastropods, estimate percent algal cover, and catch crabs. Each day, we spent one hour catching as many crabs as possible and tossing them in a bucket for safe keeping until we could ID, sex, and measure them. No crevice was left un-inspected and no rock left unturned in our hunt for crabs.
Since it was raining most of the time, we brought the crabs back to the station to sort them by species and gather data on their sex and size. There was a little difficulty at first with identifying some species, but, luckily for us, Peter Davey, the crab expert, just happened to be staying across the street from the station for a few days with his wife. He managed to sneak away to have a look at our crabs and helped us ID the species we weren't sure of. After all our data was collected, we returned the crabs to their home shores then I sat at my computer inputting everything into excel. I spent a large portion of my evenings looking up scientific papers to cite for the paper that I eventually have to write about our mini study. ( I was working on it earlier this evening, but then decided my blog would be a more worthwhile endeavor. Don't worry, the paper isn't due until the 21st. so I've still got plenty of time.)
These projects took up the majority of our time on the Island, but we did manage to play around a bit. A few of us went out for a snorkel over the sandy shore we had previously trampled over during a break in the rain. There wasn't a whole lot to see, but we did get to swim with a huge school of shinny fish. Being mature university students and adults, we pretended to be dolphins and chased the school around for a good half hour watching them move as a body of one. It was big fun indeed! hahaha. Later in the week, about half of us went on a little sand boarding excursion. That was a lot of fun too. I guess sand boarding is kind of like snow boarding or skate boarding, but only in the sense that you stand on a board with one foot in front of the other. Steering is weird; you put all your weight on your back leg and use your front leg to decide where to go, which is extremely difficult. I did manage to ride down the hill standing up on the board quite a few times... so yay!
Our last day on Straddie, we ventured over to Point Lookout to have a wander around the cliffs and beaches. From the cliffs, we saw some turtles and dolphins in the water. And in the distance, we could see whales breeching and spouting. We stopped off at a gelato shop then continued down the beach. After swimming for about an hour, we loaded onto the bus and came back home to Brissy. But only for a short while; I'm flying to Sydney tomorrow afternoon for a three day weekend then on Monday heading to Carnarvon Gorge for our final Terrestrial Ecology field trip. Life in Australia is busy! But I love it.
<3 Jessie
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