Mid Semester Break Part 1- Heron Island 4/9-4/14

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Thursday April 9th/Friday April 10th- After turning in a paper on Thursday afternoon I packed for Heron island and what would become the first part of the best trip and 10 days I could ever imagine. I packed pretty light for the trip figuring there certainly wouldn’t be very much besides the Heron Island Research Station and the resort on the island. At 1130pm Seth and I headed from King’s to the main bus stop on campus to catch the bus which would take us to Gladstone (where the ferry is to go to Heron). The bus ride was complete misery. It gave me flashbacks to the Greyhound bus ride to St. Louis for a hockey tournament after my senior year of HS. The bus was cramped and the seats didn’t recline. To top it off there was not an empty seat in the thing to be found. Seth and I were two of the later people to arrive so we had to sit where we could. I sat with a girl named Cleo that I knew from the Moreton Bay field trip. You’d think sitting next to a girl would help with space but no. She’s thin but she’s also about 5’11. We were in there like sardines and the bus ride was about 8 hours. Luckily I brought my eye shades and my neck pillow so I wasn’t completely uncomfortable but it wasn’t great. To add insult to injury the bus made stops about every 2 hours so even if you did fall asleep it wasn’t for very long. I did semi luck out because Cleo pulled some kind of ninja maneuver and climbed over me while I was sleeping to lie in the aisle of the bus. It wasn’t the safest thing possible but it helped both of us. We got to Gladstone and ate breakfast at McDonald’s (by the way the breakfast sandwiches are much better in the states from Mickey D’s). By the time we pulled into the ferry station it was roughly 8am and we received the pleasant news that the ferry didn’t depart until 11am. We had 3 hours to kill. I called home for one last radio transmission because there was no cell service on Heron and I proceeded to lie in a big group in a field under the shade of a tree and took a nap. I posted up in the field until it was time to go.

We boarded the ferry at 11am and took seats inside. The ferry was a big catamaran with 2 decks but limited seating outside. The top floor had a really small place for people to sit inside with space for about 16 people and then the outside seating on the top had room for about 20 or 25. We boarded the boat after the tourists so our group was mostly in the belly of the beast. It was nice inside and had plenty of seating with tables placed all throughout. I sat at a table with room for 8 people (Amanda, Chelsea, Mikey, Brian, Me, Seth, Toby, and her boyfriend- I never did learn his name, oh well), 4 sitting forward and 4 sitting backward. I was smart enough to make sure I faced forward. I had Bonine but I had neglected to take it because I didn’t think the ferry ride over would be too bad. I had forgotten I had it until we got on the boat and then I figured it’d be fine without. Boy was I wrong. The first 5-10 minutes of the ferry ride was fine (it was a total ride of 2 hours and 15 minutes) but after that it got wild. Once we hit the open water it started to get really really bumpy. I’m talking 7-8 foot swells bumpy. It was pretty hairy. The progressive looks on our faces went from “oh haha look some waves wooo this could be bumpy” to “oh my God how long is this ride?” to “I don’t know if I’m going to make it.” I reached for the Bonine, took my 2, and then handed out most of the rest as if I was a Pez dispenser. I was smart enough to save some for the ride home but most of my box was demolished. Looking back on it I should have kept a time progressive journal on the events of the ferry. It went pretty much like this: the first one to go was Seth. He was really one of the first on the entire bottom part of our ferry to really be affected by the wave action. Remember, these are big swells and the ferry is catching legitimate air off the top of them. So as Seth gets up to head to the back of the boat to ultimately dispose of his breakfast, we hit a really bad swell and Seth goes flying and completely wipes out. It was arguably one of the funniest things I have ever seen. It’s not very nice to say, but Seth is a big football player who plays defensive end, and to see him get tossed was hilarious. He picked himself up and then scurried to the outside and back of the boat never to be seen again. One by one people started to disappear, not only from my table, but from the inside in general. Ultimately it ended up being Me, Chelsea, and Brian left at the table after about 45 minutes. I finally looked at Brian and just said, “I’ll see you on the beach.” About 5 minutes later the intense motion finally caught up with me and I headed to the back of the boat. I wasn’t as close to throwing up as I could have been, but I started to teeter. I played it safe and went outside to the back to get some air and get away from the chamber of being inside. It was a good play by me because I think it ultimately prevented me from throwing up. Seth was close to where I was sitting though, and he was making these horrible sounds I’ve never heard a human make as he was dry heaving. It sounded something like what a bear would sound like if you were skinning it live. I just looked at him and said something to the effect of I don’t even need to throw up because I feel like I’m going through it with him. After 2 hours and 15 minutes, the misery and torture ended for a lot of folks and we arrived at Heron Island.

We got off the ferry and just about everyone looked like they had been through a war. We made our way to the Research Station and the big lecture hall to receive our introduction. The introduction was about an hour and just went through the procedures of the Research Station and how to split into living arrangements and an overview of all of the animals that could kill us. The rule of thumb for the entire weekend was basically just don’t touch it unless told otherwise. I hadn’t planned on touching anything but you’d be surprised how many people need to be told. We also had a chance to meet the Soup Nazi, who was to be our cook for the weekend. She was arguably one of the meanest people I’ve ever met, but she cooked great food so I can’t complain. She just had a ton of rules to remember and meal times were very specific. A lot of people were yelled at during the weekend for doing things wrong. After we had our orientation we were dismissed and told to find roommates and pick a room. I ended up in a room with 6. It was me, Seth (Dson), Mikey (Dson), Brian (Dson), Blake (goes to Washington U in St. Louis but is from Pgh), and Adam (Wash U). This ended up being a great decision because we had a lot of laughs and a lot of fun in the room. I also had one of the bottom bunks for this trip unlike last time. After we split up into our rooms we went to the kitchen and ate lunch. After lunch we had to break up into buddy pairs and then head down to be fitted for our snorkel equipment. Now, the mask/snorkel and fins part was easy enough, but we had to also be fitted for a wetsuit. Wetsuits are supposed to fit you like a glove and be extremely tight, so you can imagine what it was like for us to try and squeeze into these things in clothes. It was really funny but really uncomfortable. I was luckily in the first group of 6 to go down to be fitted so I received a wetsuit. Eventually they ran out (they’d get more when the other school group left the next day). Anyway, after being fit for everything and having a chance to go change (which was really difficult, a dry wetsuit is really hard to get into…really hard), we went down to the harbor for our swim/snorkel test. I was pretty confident I’d be fine, especially because I was told the wetsuit would give us added buoyancy. We took to the water in groups of about 10 and swam out into the harbor and past the ship wreck in the harbor and back. I’ll say this much: I don’t want to snorkel again without a wetsuit. It’s basically a life jacket in the water for you. When you wear one you basically just float there and can even go straight up like you’d be standing and it just bobs you up and down. I think even the old man could snorkel if we squeezed him into a wetsuit. At any rate I passed easily, along with everyone else on the trip, and we went back to the station, took off our gear, showered, and got ready for dinner. We had dinner and then had a meeting after we ate to split up into tutor groups. We all numbered off and were randomly assigned to tutors. I lucked out and ended up with Adrian again, my tutor from Moreton Bay who is the shark/fish expert. I was in a group with 8 girls, which you’d think would be a good thing, except only a couple of them were actually nice people. The others were pretty stuck up but you’ll have that. One side note that I learned from this trip is that Canadians have no sense of humor. Adrian is absolutely hilarious, but he is a little dry and you have to be willing to try and get it. The looks they gave him probably would have killed him if they could. Apparently if you’re from Canada, carry yourself like you’re the most attractive people on the planet (although you clearly aren’t), and act like your crap doesn’t stink then it inhibits you from having a sense of humor. We had to break up into smaller groups for 2 different projects so thankfully I ended up with a couple nice girls, 2 American and 2 Canadian. We didn’t quite know which project we were going to do yet, but the purpose of the meeting was just to get the group split up. By about 7 we were dismissed for the night and pretty much everyone headed to their room for at least a pit stop. The 6 of us in our room laid down to take a rest and then see what everyone else was doing, but the laying down part spelled the end of us. I don’t think I’ve ever gone to bed at 7 when I wasn’t sick, but I just passed out along with everyone else in the room. We slept with the light and clothes on until about when someone woke up and turned off the light. I woke up around then and changed my clothes and went back to sleep. No one heard a peep from any of us until 7am the next morning. We needed the 12 hours of sleep.

Saturday April 11th- At about 7am we had an alarm go off in the room and pretty much just stumbled out of bed and went to breakfast. We had a meeting at 8am we had to be ready for to get the game plan for the day. The basic plan for the day was a snorkel around Shark Alley and Ray Corner (about half the island), come back for lunch, have a group meeting, go for a reef walk at low tide, have dinner, another group meeting, and then we’d be on our own. I had been talking before about how I wanted to see a shark and rest assured I wasn’t disappointed. We started at the harbor and made our way to the right around the island. The water wasn’t as warm as you’d think it would be, although it was very clear. The water was not very deep during the entire morning snorkel. Only about 4.5-6 feet at the max, and at most times it was shallower than that. When we first started out one girl in our group had a mini panic attack so we had to stop and get her squared away. She was worried because she had never snorkeled before and she was terrified of the sharks. She was a very small person so she was afraid one might eat her haha. After a little talking to by Adrian and some exercises she was fine and we continued on our way. Luckily we were the second group so a lot of the animals weren’t scared away by so much human activity. We didn’t see a whole lot except some small fish and a few big fish until we got to Shark Alley. Shark Alley was on the side of the island where the resort was and was not very deep water at all. Like I said, it probably maxed out around 6 feet where we were although it was probably a little shallower than that because I could stand. We just made our way along and saw a bunch of different fish, pretty decent sized ones as well. My favorite fish of the weekend was a fish called the Parrot Fish. It’s green and colored like a Parrot, has a beak type mouth, and flaps its fins like a bird to swim. All of a sudden, we started seeing the sharks. The biggest one we saw on the first snorkel through shark alley was about 7 feet, and they ranged in size between about 4 feet-7 feet. All of the sharks we saw were Lemon Sharks but we counted at least 10 during our brief swim through Shark Alley. As long as we didn’t try to touch them or corner them they paid us no attention at all. There’s something really special about seeing a big animal like a shark in its habitat. You’re clearly the visitor in their world and seeing them move so effortlessly through the water is something I won’t soon forget. It’s hard to fully capture how they swam and looked in the water but they definitely deserve respect. Surprisingly enough after I got the adrenaline rush of seeing the first couple big ones I was completely comfortable in the water with them. It obviously helped I knew they were Lemon Sharks and aren’t known particularly for their ferocity, had they been Bull Sharks it would be a different story, but they were still big animals that could easily take a chunk out of you if they wanted. After we made our way past the sharks we ended up seeing a bunch of rays. I actually was more uneasy with the rays because you’re swimming just over top of them by a couple feet and they have those barbs on the tails. The real concern in the water at the time though was the Blue Bottle Jellyfish (Portuguese Man O Wars, although these were pretty small). The rays we saw weren’t particularly large, with the biggest being about 3 feet across. After we deemed we had seen enough and dodged enough blue bottles, we made our way to the shore and trekked back across the island to the research station. We had a chance to change and then had lunch. At 1pm we broke into our groups for about an hour meeting to try to come up with project ideas. We were throwing out some ideas but I was pretty set on trying to do something with the sharks. Adrian said we probably wouldn’t be able to do that because sharks were largely off limits for safety purposes. I kept telling him we could figure something out and a way to make it work. We had about an hour to kill after the meeting so everyone just hung out. I checked out the “Touch Tank” by the lecture hall which was basically just a tank with star fish and sea cucumbers which we were allowed to touch. At 3pm we made our way out to the side of the island by the research station for the reef walk. When the tide was low much of the coral close to the island was exposed and we were able to walk between it and see some animals we normally wouldn’t recognize if the tide was high. Tibbetts led us out but then we broke up into our tutor groups. Adrian hung us back from the main group and swarm of people for a bit to let the animals (mostly snails and such) come out of hiding but also to discuss our projects. This is when he told me he had figured out something to do with the Lemon Sharks. I was thrilled. What we’d be doing is doing research and trying to discover a reason why the sharks only frequent one part of the island as opposed to the other. Our hypothesis would be that the differences in fish distribution and food availability led to the sharks only inhabiting one part of the island. This also meant we’d have to get back into the water with the sharks and count/identify the types of fish in each area. Anyway, after we got the project ideas all squared away we walked through the coral and looked at everything. I’ll say this much, it was a windy path through the coral and the coral are really sharp. If you brushed up against them you’d probably be scratched and it was really easy to get cut. There were a couple casualties throughout the group, including Brian, but I wasn’t one of them. I made sure to tread very carefully because I know what my luck is like. After the reef walk we had about an hour to ourselves before dinner. We were told the baby turtles started to hatch anywhere from 4pm to the early hours of the morning. Seth, Ryan (a tutor) and I took a walk around the island to try to see them. I talked with Seth about how I really wanted to see a nest go, I had already checked swimming with sharks off the bucket list so I figured why not shoot for one more. We passed a lady on the beach who said she had just seen a nest go about 10 minutes previously, so we were pretty bummed. It took us about 30 minutes to walk around the entire island, and that was mostly just because the beach was slanted so it was difficult to walk on. We made it in time for dinner and then we split up into our groups to hammer out the details of doing research the following day. After the group meeting I hunted down Tibbetts because I had the brilliant idea previously in the day to swim with the sharks in the morning in the harbor that were feeding on the bait ball (the bait ball is a big school of fish that hangs out around the pier at the harbor). I asked Tibbetts if it was safe and when to go. He told us it was absolutely safe and he would be down there in the morning so we could meet him down there. He just said not to go down before the sun was at least a little up because the sharks can’t distinguish between your fingers and the fish. That was enough reason for me to wait until about 545am to go. Seth, Mikey, and Brian were in to go. After talking to Tibbetts I headed down to the beach with a group of about 15 kids, a couple Dickinson, but most of them from other places. We were all just hanging out and talking. It was a clear night with a full moon. At probably about 9pm or so, we were sitting talking, and someone spotted something small moving. The next thing you know, someone screams “TURTLES” and we all jump up. A nest was hatching, and not only was it hatching, they were running right through us. To watch them go in the night with a full moon was more than I could ever ask for. They were so small, so fragile, yet they had one goal and that was just to try to get to the water as quickly as they could. There was probably about 50 or so that ran right through us. We watched them climb over rocks and obstacles and make it to the water. It was something you’d see on the discovery channel, but it isn’t a regular occurrence. Ryan, one of the tutors, had been coming for about 5 years and had yet to see a nest go. When they run it lasts for about 10 minutes and then it’s over, so if you aren’t in the right place at the right time you miss it. If I could sum it up in one word the only word that comes to mind is pure. It was simply pure. Absolutely magnificent. Unfortunately we knew the fate which awaited most of them, as we could see dorsal fins in the water and rays patrolling. Less than 1% of turtles that hatch make it to adult hood. It’s a big part of why they are an endangered species. A lot of them got eaten, but there’s no way the sharks and rays could have gotten all of them, there was too many. So I hope some of them made it to the ocean. The treat wasn’t over, though. About 15 minutes after the first nest went a second nest went just about 15 yards down the beach. This one wasn’t nearly as large as the first nest, but it was just as captivating. After we watched the second nest go we decided it was time to call the night and go to bed. We figured we couldn’t end it any better or top it. At about 10pm Seth, Brian, Mikey, and I climbed into bed. We all got to talking and it ended up being a hilarious night. It was one of those nights where we were all on our game with the commentary and were just going back and forth. We discussed some pretty serious issues too which is funny. Simply put, Seth is a conspiracy theorist, so when we got to talking about 9/11 (don’t ask me how) there were some exchanges, nothing rude, just discussion, but definite disagreement. Neither I, Mikey, or Brian are in any way conspiracy theorists, so for the rest of the trip the tagline for everything that happening became “Conspiracy on!” for Seth. At about 1 or 130am we finally called it quits and went to bed. We had a big morning coming up.

Sunday April 12th- The alarm went off in our room at 530am and Seth, Brian, Mikey and I threw on our swim trunks and went into the bathroom area where our snorkel gear was kept. It was just getting light outside and it was a little chilly, especially because we were putting on cold, damp wetsuits. We walked down to the harbor, talking mostly about how this went against everything we had been taught about sharks. The rules of thumb are always don’t swim at dawn or dusk, certainly don’t swim where sharks are feeding, and avoid big schools of bait fish. When we got down to the harbor Tibbetts was already in the water snorkeling around the pillars of the pier around the bait ball. We walked up onto the pier to see the sharks and they were certainly around. I gave Mikey the good old, “Get busy living or get busy dying” line from Shawshank and we made our way into the water. Seth and I were in first and Brian and Mikey got in shortly behind us. Within about 2 minutes of being in the water Seth and I were looking down and about a 5 or 6 foot lemon shark came barreling up right underneath us and smashed the bait ball. It’s certainly a way to wake you up in the morning and get the heart rate up. We saw some smaller black tip sharks as well feeding. It was really cool. We didn’t see as many sharks as we thought because we had missed the main feeding time but it would’ve been too dark then. We saw probably about 4 sharks. It’s wild to be in the water though when a shark goes through the bait ball and all of the fish scatter. After about 15 minutes of being around the pier Tibbetts yelled to us asking us if we wanted to go out to the wreck with him. Naturally we did so we started heading out towards the ship wreck further out into the harbor. I’ll say this much: the ship wreck in the morning was great. It was before people were swimming there and certainly no groups were out, so we saw much much more than we had the first time we swam out to the ship wreck. It was a good experience and after about an hour total in the water we had to head back to the research station to eat breakfast. Everyone looked at us like we were crazy when they saw us walking back from the harbor in our snorkel gear and told them what we did. I guess we were a little crazy but it was fine. After breakfast there was a scheduled boat snorkel, which would take us actually out onto the Great Barrier Reef. We’d be swimming in open water so they had to go over a few safety things with us. I was in the first boat group to go out at 8am. Whoever was in the first group grabbed their gear and we made our way down to the harbor to the little dingy which would take us out to the reef. There were 2 boats down there and my tutor group and another one loaded up into the boats. Loading up into the boat was the most difficult part. We were standing in water up to about our waist and we had to jump up in the wetsuit and pull ourselves onto the boat. It was an adventure but everyone got on board. We were supposed to go to a place that was considered 1 of the top 5 places in the world to snorkel but something with currents didn’t allow us to go there. Instead we went to a different spot where Ryan had seen a 12 foot tiger shark a couple years before. The dingy ride over was fun, it was a little inflatable boat like you’d imagine the navy seals on. When we got to the spot where we’d be dropped off we had a brief conversation and then got in the water. We rolled off the side backwards like you’d see the seals doing or divers. Surprisingly enough that part was really really fun. I was the first one in the water so I waited for my buddy to get in and then we started off. Once everyone was safely away from the boat the dingy circled back around a couple hundred meters away where it would eventually pick us up. The current was sending us towards where the boat would be so basically all you had to do was float. If there was something to look at all I did was kick pretty lightly and it’d keep you in basically the same place to look at things. The coral itself wasn’t what you’d imagine on the discovery channel. It was mostly brown with some patches of red and purple. It’s hard to describe exactly how it looked. There was also a drop off down the coral and it was deep enough that we couldn’t see the ocean floor. We didn’t see much else besides heaps of fish and some coral but it was a great time. After about an hour we loaded back up onto the boats and went back to the island. There was no rest for the weary, as we had to do a fish transect for our project. The fish transect was to be through Shark Alley, and basically we had to swim through Shark Alley and pop up everyone 10 meters to talk about and give a count of the different types of fish we had. What this basically meant was I was getting in the water with the sharks again. The 3 people in our group who went on the first snorkel (me, Paige, and Carmen) would do the fish transect with Adrian while the other 2 girls who had been doing research while we were gone stayed on the shore (they’d be going on the last boat snorkel). The fish transect was interesting to do because we counted a lot of different types and species of fish, not to mention we saw another 10-12 sharks while we were in the water. No big groups were coming through so none of the sharks were scared off. We saw one shark that was probably about 8-9 feet. It wasn’t very far away from us but it paid exactly 0 attention to the people in the water. The funny thing was every 10 meters we had to pop up and talk about the fish and write down what we saw, regardless of what was around us. Like I said before after being in the water with them the first time, and especially after being in the water as they were feeding, I was completely comfortable. After the transect it was our turn to do the research, which entailed sitting at the resort and counting the sharks we could see. We did this until lunch while the other 2 girls went on the last boat snorkel. At noon we called it quits and went to eat lunch. The afternoon was reserved for people to do project work, but my group was finished for the day at noon. At 130 Tibbetts took us on an “island walk” where basically we just went to a couple different spots on the island and he told us about the history of Heron. Really it would have been interesting except I was exhausted from being up so early and doing so much, so I fought off falling asleep anywhere we were sitting. At about 3 the island walk was over and we had the rest of the afternoon and evening to do what we wanted. Brian and I headed down to the beach to relax and we were joined by Seth, Mikey and Amanda at one point. I ended up taking a nice little nap laying on the beach for about an hour. One of the things I wanted to do was catch a sunset over the ocean because I had never seen one, so around 5pm Seth, Mikey, Brian, and I started to get up and make our way down the beach towards the pier where we were hoping we’d see the sunset. It was just a waiting game to see if the clouds would hold out. As we were walking down the beach we saw these seagulls that were hanging around sort of up by where the woods are. About 2 minutes previously we had seen a seagull fly by with a baby turtle in its mouth. We decided to keep walking but Brian and I doubled back to see what the birds were doing. Sure enough, as soon as we got there, another nest of turtles started to go. Seth and Mikey came running back, and the war of attrition started between us and the sea gulls. I personally can’t stand sea gulls. They’re pigeons of the ocean. The sea gulls wouldn’t take any of the turtles by us but instead they’d try and pick off the ones we were far away from. The battle raged on. We were able to get some really good pictures of the baby sea turtles which was nice (when they go at night you aren’t supposed to take any pictures with flash because it screws them up. They’re attracted to light so the camera flash screws them up). However, as this went on, I spotted one baby turtle heading away from the group. Instead of running towards the water with the rest of him, he was running towards the sun (the light thing). It became my personal mission to get this turtle safely to the water. I walked with it the entire way down the beach and moved rocks out of its way that it was getting stuck on. Just as a precaution I picked up a rock in case any sea gull decided to get cute. I walked with it parallel to the beach for awhile until it righted itself and started to head towards the water. After about 10 or 15 minutes my turtle finally made it to the water. By this time Seth, Mikey, and Brian were over by me because all of the other turtles were long gone. My turtle finally hit the water and as it started to swim away I was appalled as I saw a sea gull diving down about 15 yards out from where I was standing. I knew what he was going after: my turtle. I cocked back with my rock and let it rip. Just as the sea gull was hitting the water to grab the turtle the rock tagged it right in the side. It dropped the turtle, flew away and we all erupted on the beach. That throw went down in Heron Island folklore. None of the 3 of the guys could believe I actually hit it. Seth started calling me Nolan Ryan and Brian dubbed me the gunnery sergeant. Apparently the 3 years of playing baseball did me well, and for all I know it was a sign that it’s time to resurrect my baseball career. I was just happy I saved the turtle. There was no way it was dying on my watch after I had been through the entire ordeal of walking it down the beach. I like to think he made it out to the ocean. We weren’t able to save all the turtles from the sea gulls, but we definitely saved more than half of them. About 15 minutes after the turtle ordeal I saw my first sunset over the ocean. It’s pretty cool. After the sun went down we went back to dinner. We told everyone our story of another nest going and I dubbed us the “turtle whisperers.” Over half the group had yet to see a nest, and poor Ryan still hadn’t seen one. We had turtles flying all over the place. We had a good steak dinner and then a turtle expert on the island came to talk to us at about 730. We had bought wine from the kitchen after dinner so we went down to the beach to drink and relax once the turtle guy was done with his presentation. We finally went to bed at about 1 or 130 ( On a side note, because my phone didn’t work on the island and I had no watch, I had no clue what time it was all weekend. I had to rely on other people).

Monday April 13th- For as great as the weekend had been so far, Monday started as a complete disaster. Our alarm didn’t go off in the morning so we didn’t wake up until about 745 so we missed breakfast. There was another boat snorkel for everyone to go on again and because we had gone on the first one last time, the other 2 girls went on the first one. Carmen and I went to a different spot than we had the previous day for research, and when Adrian explained it he wasn’t very clear exactly where we had to be. Instead of showing us where to go he went on the boat snorkel with the girls. Carmen and I were on our own. We took our best guess as to where we were supposed to but as we’d find out later, we were about 75 yards off the mark. To just keep piling it on, it was on and off torrential downpours all morning. Now, the day before when we got off the boat from the first snorkel, we made sure we high tailed it to where the other girls were so we had time to do the fish transect and the girls had plenty of time to get ready for the boat snorkel. Adrian and the girls didn’t do the same for us, by the time they got to us it was about 1010 and we were supposed to leave at 1030 for our boat snorkel. When they got to us we moved over to where we were supposed to be in the first place and they got in the water to do the fish transect. By the time the fish transect was over the dingies were heading back to the shore (we could see them in the distance). Adrian told us we’d have to run back to get our stuff and catch the boat. Don’t underestimate how tough it was to run back on the slanted beach in the pouring rain. When we got to the place where the snorkel gear was stored I grabbed my wet suit, turned around to grab my gear, and it was gone. Someone had swiped my mask, snorkel, and flippers earlier in the day. Nothing that was still there would fit me. I was absolutely livid. Had I known who took my gear I probably would have hit them. I ended up missing out on the second boat snorkel because I had no gear and no time to get new stuff. It’s a shame because obviously it was someone who had wrong sized stuff before and was too lazy to get new gear so they grabbed mine. It took me most of the afternoon to get over it. When everyone got back for lunch (I didn’t miss anything on the boat snorkel apparently) I made sure to go into the place where the gear was kept and grab my stuff and throw it in my room so it wouldn’t happen again. I wasn’t missing out on anything else we did. I was in a really bad mood for awhile. I did get over it but I was just really angry. After lunch the afternoon was consumed with preparing our projects for presentation and the actual presentations themselves. The presentation went fine (it wasn’t graded) and we broke for dinner. After dinner we had a meeting about the events of the evening. There had been rumblings throughout the weekend of the possibility of a night snorkel, but it was unsure because of the weather. When we had our meeting they told us the night snorkel was on, there was cloud cover so it would be pitch black, but we were able to go. We were going to snorkel around the ship wreck, across to the other side of the channel, back around to the boats, and then out (a big circle). They took a head count of people that wanted to participate (I think about 10 sat out) because Tibbetts did admit that it was more risky. A couple years ago they saw a 12 foot hammerhead shark during the night snorkel. It was just in the harbor but they can’t control what’s in there and not in there, and at night you can’t really see so it’s impossible to tell. We didn’t have to go with our tutor groups so Mikey and I teamed up as buddies and signed up to go. We were to be the second group to go. Each group had 20 and was then split up into 10. The ground rules were basically no diving under the water and we had to pretty much stick with the group. The students would have green glow sticks attached to their snorkel and the tutors would have red ones. At about 830 Mikey and I made our way down to the harbor to wait for the first group to get out of the water. When they got out they passed their glow sticks to us, and luckily I saw Seth, who had this really big underwater flashlight, really the best one they had, and he gave it to me. Everyone had one but they weren’t very good, mine was like a laser beam. Admittedly tensions were a little high and most of the talk was about sharks. There was no way I was going to miss it though, and neither was anyone else. Once we got all the gear we needed we headed down the pier to the stairs with Chris (the tutor). When we got down to the stairs we threw on our fins and everyone got in the water. We headed off and started to check things out. I had the most powerful underwater flashlight but it probably went only about 25 feet. It was a little creepy and the trick was basically to just concentrate on what was below you and not think about what may be coming from the other side. Human nature and instinct though makes you want to at least occasionally scan what’s next to you, and I was guilty of doing it a few times. Within about 5 minutes we saw about a 6 foot lemon shark cruising along the bottom. For as cool as the sharks were during the day, it was even neater to see it at night. Just the way they move and cut through the water and to see it at night was an entirely different experience. As we kept snorkeling around we saw an octopus and a bunch of different fish. The octopus was really cool, especially with how good its camouflage is. It wasn’t very big, probably about the size of a basketball, but it swims in a really interesting way. Its hard to even explain its something you’d have to see on TV. About half way through we were just snorkeling along and I felt this intense stinging sensation on my ankle just above where the fins go. The wetsuit only comes down past your knee so there’s a small part of your leg that’s exposed. I couldn’t see what hit me but I popped up and told Chris I had been stung by something. I tried to see if there was anything on my leg with the flashlight but it was too hard to tell. I sat there cussing for a second and Chris told me that “unfortunately you’re just going to have to keep swimming.” No. You think? What else was I supposed to do? I sucked it up and we kept going. I was glad we did because we ended up seeing 2 HUGE sea turtles hanging out in the shallows. They had to have been over 300-400 pounds. Just enormous. I wouldn’t be able to wrap my arms around it if I wanted to, it would probably take 2 sets of arms. I’m not even sure Dejuan Blair could get around them. That’s how big they were. The night snorkel lasted about 45 minutes and after we saw the turtles at the end we got out of the water. My ankle was still throbbing and when I finally got back to the research station Tibbetts gave me a bottle of vinegar. The vinegar did nothing to help. I was able to see it in the light and it looked like if you took 4 fingers and put them on your ankle, only thinner than the fingers. I took a shower and promptly peed on my leg in the shower, which helped some. After I showered I put more vinegar on it, which again, did nothing. It was about 2 hours before the stinging went away. I figured while I was here I had to be bitten by something, so why not a blue bottle jellyfish. For the rest of the night I just hung out with people and we played different card games until it was time to go to bed. I went to bed probably around 1230 or 1.

Tuesday April 14th- We woke up and got breakfast at 7. We had planned on getting up to swim with the sharks one more time while they fed but it was pouring down rain so we decided against it and waited until 7 to get up. After breakfast we just went through the typical clean up of the rooms and packing of our stuff. I went over to the resort and bought a couple little things for souvenirs and then we just played the waiting game. At 1pm the ferry arrived with more tourists and the second group of Heron Island kids and we boarded the boat. I was smarter this time about the Bonine and took it at about 11. I had a few extras so I gave Seth 2, Kim 1 and Amanda 1. Those things knock me out. The ferry ride back was like glass and I slept basically the entire 2 hours. When we got back to the dock we had to wait for the bus to come and get us and then we stopped to get dinner at Hungry Jacks (Burger King). The bus set course for home at about 530. Luckily a lot of people went up to the Whitsunday Islands so the bus was only half as full as when we went. I had 2 seats to myself so I was able to spread out and I slept most of the way home. We arrived back at UQ at about 1230am. I walked back to King’s and threw in some laundry. My flight for Darwin would be leaving at 1215pm the next day and the taxi was coming at 10am. The Heron trip overall was unbelievable. I certainly checked some things off the bucket list and it’s something I’ll never forget. It was an experience I’ll carry with me forever.

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Photos

Heron Island
A view of the beach

Heron Island
A view of the beach

Heron Island
A view of the beach

Heron Island
Blue bottle jellyfish...I had an encounter with 1 of these. Not pleasant.

Heron Island
Another blue bottle

Heron Island
The Pittsburgh crew...Mikey, me and Blake

Heron Island
A view

Heron Island
Rocky shore

Heron Island
Research station sign

Heron Island
This was during the reef walk. We had these yellow tubes to help us look under the water. I tried to take a picture of some brain coral

Heron Island
During the reef walk

Heron Island
View of sun starting to go down. It ended up being cloudy on Saturday for the sunset.

Heron Island
Out on the reef walk looking back at the island

Heron Island
Mikey and I with our backs to the island

Heron Island
Clouds for sunset

Heron Island
A view

Heron Island
A view from the resort

Heron island
A view from the resort

Heron Island
This is part of the resort and where I was hanging out counting sharks after the fish transect.

Heron Island
A view from the resort

Heron Island
A view

Heron Island
A view

Heron Island
I took a picture as I was laying on the beach getting ready to nap. I didn't realize my feet were in it until after.

Heron Island
Seth, me, and Brian

Heron Island
Mikey ran quite a distance to grab a piece of paper that flew out of the book Seth had. It was really funny.

Heron Island
Baby turtles!

Heron Island
Here is the first shot of a lot of my turtle that was going parallel.

Heron Island
My baby turtle

Heron Island
My baby turtle

Heron Island
My baby turtle

Heron Island
You get the point, the rest of the baby turtle shots are of mine.

Heron Island
This is a good shot to show how small they are

Heron Island
Sun starting to go down...

Heron Island
...Yet the baby turtle is still going

Heron Island
Sun a little further down, and we're still runnin with turtles. Specifically mine.

Heron Island
Sunset with the ship wreck