Heron Island- A trip to Paradis Part 2

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Saturday October 6^th,



This morning I woke up bright and early at 5:30 to go for a morning snorkel by the jetty and the ship wreck. As we jumped in the coolness of the water raced all over my body. Although we are in the topics the water is still fairly chilly. As we made our way out to the wreck we took some photos of each other with our underwater camera (it is actually harder than you think). While out there we saw a ton of fish all some amazing colors, a crown of thorn star fish, and a turtle that zoomed by.



After lecture that morning my group went back out into the water to work on our goby project, we spent the next hour observing gobies do their thing in the sandy waters at the bottom of the reef. On our way back into shore Colleen and I looked back and saw a black tipped shark off in the distance as it swam away we started our way back to shore only a couple of seconds later to look left and see another one swimming probably 25 feet away swimming alongside of us. We turned forward to find another one directly in front of us. It was absolutely incredible!



About twenty minutes after getting out of the water we went on a boat snorkeling trip about five minutes away from the island to a place called canyon reef. In the harbor on the way out and back from the reef you looked down and saw rays and sharks swimming by in the crystal clear blue water every once in a while. On the reef there were all these canyons of coral. You could dive down into the canyons with big mountains of coral on either side of you. We saw a huge diversity of fish, a huge 3 foot lobster, a blown up puffer fish, a turtle swim quickly by, a shark, and two bottle nose dolphins that swam right by me; I was able to swim right alongside them for about 15 seconds until they swam away. It was absolutely magnificent!!



Just had the most amazing night of my life! Continuing the saga of an amazing week at Heron Island we went for a night snorkel tonight out to the ship wreck. With a glow stick around our snorkels and a flashlight in our hands we set of in the dark night into the ocean. Within about two minutes we saw a black tipped shark swim along the bottom about 50 feet in front of us and a few minutes later another one swam by down below. All was pretty still after that only seeing the occasional fish swim away from the light of the torch. All changed when we hit the wreck though. Sitting alongside the wreck was a hug loggerhead turtle sleeping, I was able to get about 5 feet away from it. On our way back from the wreck swimming in the channel we saw a huge grouper, probably 5 feet long chasing after a fish. About thirty seconds later a shovelnose ray swam past us down below. In front of us was another black tipped shark, as we were all watching the shark out of know where the shovel nose ray came speeding back from behind us right under our legs, I was probably 10 feet max above it. The ray and the shark were swimming around each other for a couple of seconds until they both disappeared. When they were gone we slowly made our way back through the dark water back to the jetty. It was an impeccable way to end of the most amazing days of my life.

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Photos

Green Sea Turtle
Amazing shot captured on a snorkel. Many turtles like this were spotted during the week

Just chillin in the water
No big deal, just snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef

Shark
Visuals like this were a daily occurrence on this field trip. They would just casual swim by you... no big deal anything its just a shark

Girl Pic
Picture of the girls before mid morning snorkel next to the island