Orpheus Island reef fishes field trip

Orpheus Island; my reef fishes class took a field trip to Orpheus Island Research Station from Sunday to Wednesday to do some fish censusing and learn how to do some research via snorkeling.

Sunday morning came way too fast. But somehow it was worth waking up that early. We had to meet the bus half way across campus at 530AM, yuck. It was a bit scary walking across the campus in complete darkness, but I felt a lot better with a flashlight (thanks Uncle Ray). It took us about an hour and a half to get to Ingham where we would take a boat to the island. It was a similar spot to where I had been to get to Pelorus Island, but not exactly. There were about 28 of us heading over so we had to go over in two shifts. When we go there they fed us breakfast, which was well needed. Then we settled in for a briefing of island rules and a low down on what we were going to be doing.

Then we basically suited up-wetsuits, hoods, gloves and all and headed for the boats! We were to perform some fish censuses via transects, point surveys and other means. I’m not sure how much detail I should give, just basically imagine a really nice snorkel with a bit more work put into it. We had to carry slates with us on all the snorkels to make note of the fish families and species that we were seeing. In some cases we had to record their behavior and in others we had to even catch them. To catch them we used clove oil which acts as an anesthetic and knocks them out for a few minutes. Surprisingly I caught the most!! This was definitely my favorite exercise.

You are probably wondering why there are no pictures. The worst thing ever happened, my camera case flooded! It was the first snorkel on the first day in the afternoon. It was drenched and I can tell you its never going to be okay again. I am so bummed but I guess I’ll just have to continue on without it. Hopefully my descriptions will get better.

What else? Tuesday night we all had to give seminars. I was really scared of this because the whole trip I really had a hard time IDing fish, mostly because I missed the trip the reef HQ aquarium where the class had practiced IDing fish earlier in the semester. But it turned out to be not as bad because my group (my partner and I) had only to talk about the clove oil exercise. Perfect! At least something turned out okay!

I tried to spend a lot of the days with new people, trying not to congregate with the Americans. This worked well as I didn’t have a snorkel buddy and the only other person without a buddy was German/Canadian and she socialized with the Australians. I was really glad of this—kind of why I hadn’t tried to find a partner till the last minute, but also I think no American wanted to be my buddy anyway. Oh well!! I also slept in a dorm with a bunch of Australians, a girl from Norway and one other American. I really enjoyed the company of these people. The girl from Norway was really entertaining and the other American is really motivated—she is doing an internship in Alaska when she gets home, it’s the NOAA Hollings Scholarship that I actually applied for last year and didn’t get. Though jealous, I felt like she deserves it—she’s really smart and down to earth. Who else? I also made friends with this girl from Melbourne, it turns out she lives in Uni Hall too and actually works in the dining hall. I hope that I can continue to talk to these people in class now too.

The snorkeling was really great. There are loads of coral booms at Orpheus and tons and tons of beautiful fish. On our last day we began the day by doing a mangrove snorkel. This was pretty cool—we swam among the mangroves on the surface of water at about one meter max. My buddy found a gigantic sting ray among some of the mangrove roots. It was huge, we didn’t get close because we didn’t want to scare it and get stabbed. The fish among the mangroves were quite different than out on the coral, though they did overlap, their abundances were quite opposite.

I really wish I had pictures to show you, but I will try to get some from my snorkel buddy. I will be there again at the end of May so hopefully by then I’ll have a camera of some sort.
What else? Island food was pretty good, though the cook took forever to cook. He would wait until we were like sitting at the table to start cooking, which sucked because one night we didn’t have dinner until 9PM! But really desert made up for it.

Wet suits smell bad and are horrible to put on in the morning when they are still half way wet.
This is the worst part however. Today one of my floormates came and was telling me about this incident that happened on Orpheus Island with an American girl and an Irukanji jellyfish (one of the most deadliest and smallest jellies in the world). At first I thought he was just trying to scare me and then he told me to check the Townsville Bulletin. I did and it turns out one of the people on the group that arrived as we left yesterday got stung by an Irukanji jellyfish. She had to be evacuated out on a helicopter lift and hospitalized. This happened at 1:30PM yesterday, I left the island at 8:30AM. I am so lucky that I wasn’t her. This girl—shes in my class—it totally could have happened on our trip. And the scary part was she had a full wetsuit on and somehow it still stung her. I have no idea if she will be okay and I don’t know who she is. But it really puts my camera problem into perspective….Please don’t worry about me though, I will protect myself as much as possible.