Heron Island, Day 3

---

After a night of disrupted sleep (thank you, Shearwaters), I went for a post-breakfast snorkel with my buddy Rika. We headed out along the concrete wall that leads out towards the wreck that serves as Heron's breakwater (it's not allowed to snorkel near the wreck or in the channel during the day, as you'd be run over by a boat). We saw lots of wonderful fish, as well as three big black-tip reef sharks (easily 7 or 8 feet long).

We then headed out for a second session of deep-water, jump-off-a-boat snorkeling at a different site. This was a drift snorkel (basically, jump off the boat and drift in the current, with a boat drifting alongside you to pick up anyone who panics or gets tired). This snorkel was definitely my favorite! We saw heaps of supercool stuff. ^__^ Some of the highlights were the manta ray (my personal favorite, with a wingspan of approximately 8 feet, and not yet full grown--I think adults can have a 12 foot wingspan! Superbly graceful, extremely swift swimmers, and wonderfully impressive), a large eagle ray (beautiful as well, a grey-black ray with white 'polka dots' all over its back), a barracuda of a very large size, three green and one hawksbill turtle, several sweetlips (a large fish with amusingly large lips, of a cream color with attractive brown-black leopard spots all over), a yellow box pufferfish, more Moorish Idols, butterfly fish, and my favorites, the Blue Chromis. We also swam over some brombies (spelling?!), large coral mounds underwater which are really really old, basically a vertically growing colony of coral that's been growing for a long, long time. I just couldn't stop diving down to check out all the beautiful fish and corals, and was extremely reluctant to leave the site.

That afternoon, we performed our sea cucumber census (who-hoo. Boring, but sea cucumbers don't move and are easy to ID; additionally, it was a project we could get done in the allotted 3 hour period). We prepared a powerpoint to show off our findings, and the more creative of our group penned a poem about sea cucumbers to read during the presentation. After we were done, I ran to purchase a Heron Island tee, went on a beach walk and checked out the docks for any new critters (nothing exciting and new).

At dinner, the table where Tanja and I sat ended up being the construction worker's table. They had just got to the island and were interested to hear about what sorts of fish, etc. we'd seen. After dinner, we prepped for our presentation (sort of. Half the group didn't show up, and we ended up divvying up stuff as best as possible), and uploaded our presentation to the main computer. Our presentation wasn't awful but certainly wasn't the best I've ever given, either. The general atmosphere was rather relaxed and goofy anyways (perhaps it was the wine and beer that had been drunk at supper...) so I guess it didn't really matter.

After a shower and coordinating a morning snorkel with several of my friends, I headed to bed.

---

Photos

Sunset
I think these are technically from yesterday, but I'm putting them here.

Looking at the mainland
80 km away...