ISLAND PARADISE - Heron Island and so much more

LECTURES
- these are all about fishies and tides and oceanography
- we gave learned some cool facts like sea hares have sex in circles because they are hermaphrodites, I mean how cool! IT's been so much I can't tell you it all, but it has been interesting!

LABS
- So far I completed a coral physiology lab in which we analyse the chlorophyll and zooxanthallae content of coral pieces which we collected from the reef flat. This was pretty cool because we got to use all sorts of fun machines, like spectrogram, a centrifuge, nice microscopes, hot wax, and things like that!
-WE also did a invertebrate lab where we grabbed some hunks of dead coral, cracked them open and investigated what we found under the microscope I found tiny brittle stars, lots of weird worms, baby crabs and shrimps, spaghetti worms. Other cool things we looked at were sea hare eggs, a file clam (which are super cooolio) coral polyps.
- Next day we did transects which was coolish. We ventured out onto the reef flats took a tape measure and identiffied what was under the 20m of tape 9 times. Other groups used quadrats and then we compared the methodology in our analysis.
- Yesterday we did a FISH LAB which was essentially taking pictures of all of the cool fish and then choosing a select few awesome ones to do a quick presentation about. I got some cool pictures of a turtle and some anemone fish!

FOOD

- food is healthy and wonderful and we get muffins for snacks which is great!

SNORKELLING

- I have snorkelled everyday so far including a night dive! All bundled up in our wetsuits we jumped in with our glow sticks attached to our snorkels and had a blast scaring sleeping fish. It is oddly eerie to see fish lying on the sandy bottom, you would never think that fish stop moving would you? There were also so many turtles sleeping under the rocks and the shipwreck which was super cool. And of course a shark. My favourite moments were seeing the lemon shark, black tip reef sharks, seeing massive flying schools of eagle rays and unicorn fish!

Other free time

- I spend free time playing cards, going snorkeling if the tide is high, going on walks, and most importantly playing beach volleyball! WE have a grand tournament coming up so we often play into the sunset in preparation for dinner and the scrumptious desserts! 

- Life here is wonderful and amazing, even if it does mean getting up at the crack of dawn to enjoy the sealife. Everything is so incredibly large and friendly, to the extent that seeing a sea turtle is almost a daily occurrence, which is super cool! I feel so at home here and am loving the company whcther we are doing a random limbo competition, discussing labs, and just having a blast. 

Sorry you've been in the dark, I'm just have way too much fun! PEace and hoping everything is good wherever you are reading this from.