On Wednesday after a 2 hour and ten minute ferry ride, we arrived on Heron Island. Funny thing about Heron Island is there are NO herons on Heron Island. Let’s talk about a misnomer. We are here doing more research projects at the research station. For starters there is no internet or cell phone service here so we are all going cold turkey on this technology withdrawal. But we’ll manage to tough it out somehow. There’s always the turquoise water and pinkish, white sand to enjoy.
Although I mentioned earlier that there were no herons on Heron Island, I’m afraid that I might have mislead you that their were no birds. Now that would be lie. There were birds here and they are terrirtorally mean. One actually bit me trying to get my cookie. Another one actually stole my friend Kristens PB&J sandwich right out of her hand. They just literally come out of no where. One day we will escape these darn birds. I’m seriously thinking Hitchcock took a trip to Aussie and then was inspired to make The Birds. They are evil I tell you. Evil.
Anyways enough of that…the island is on a coral cay. It’s surrounded by the Great Barrier Reef. The vegetation here is very tropical almost like a rainforest. The sand itself like I mentioned before is white and has bits of pink coral mixed in. We spent a lot of the time on the beach here when we weren’t doing research projects. However we did end up going for more reef walks and did a great deal of field work in the ocean.
I ended up working in a group with Jessica and Anna for this group project. We decided to do a study on the location and abundance of various sea cucumber species based on sediment type and coral coverage. It basically ended up as us going into the ocean with our neoprene booties and measure out a 20 by 20 meter square with the transect down the middle. We then counted and recorded the number of sea cucumbers there. We also took a sediment sample and measure the coral coverage that was found across the transect. Overall doing this project was really fun. We even discovered a new species “Sticopus brillus” on Heron Island. It has a sudsy bubble defense when irritated instead of the usual cucumber use of cubanian tubulues. It also eats the detritus off plates instead of sediment. Similar to Holthoteria leucospilota it covers its skin in this detritus as a form of camouflage. And for those of you who haven’t figured it out yet we discovered this sea cucumber in Wendy’s sink in the kitchen.
Throughout our stay on Heron Island we went on a series of snorkeling expeditions. During these we saw so many different things like sea turtles, barracuda, sharks, manta ray and miraculously colored tropical fish. We even went for a night dive, which was pretty awesome. I was so nervous once I put on my wet suit though and realized that I had to go into the water! We tied pink glow sticks around our wrists with elastic bands so that we would stand out in the water. We saw so many amazing things. The rays were directly below us when we swam under the jetty. We also went snorkeling over by the wreck. I went inside it. It was just surreal.
I also had to opportunities to go diving on the island. This was pretty fantastic because we were diving right on the Great Barrier Reef. On the first dive I was a little bit rusty and had trouble controlling my buoyancy, but that second dive…WOW….it was like being on the set of Finding Nemo. Just too fabulous. I saw clownfish swimming in the anemone. A giant see turtle was only inches away looking at me. Then there were the dory fish, parrot fish, little blue neon fish and just so much more. Then after one of the dives when the boat pulled back into the harbor, turtle eggs were hatching: right in the middle of the day. This is something that almost never happens. So we went down to the sand and watched the turtles crawl out of their eggs then trek across the sand to the water. It was fun to help the turtles find their way to the water.
Overall Heron Island was both a beautiful and amazing experience. I can’t wait to find out what else this trip has in store for me.
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