Moreton Bay Research Station

8.23.10

Well,

Last week was not too exciting. I had class and started to get a little sick but only had symptoms and never really had a bug or anything. This was the first week I had my complete schedule with lectures and tutorials. I definitely like how my schedule has turned out.

Over the weekend, I had a field trip to the Moreton Bay Research Station on North Stradbroke Island. Unfortunately, it poured on the first day. We met at 7:30am to board the bus at the campus bus stop. There were 47 of us total. After about a 45 minutes ride we got to the ferry station. This was the first time I rode a ferry that carries vehicles. I was expecting to have to unload everything and transfer but we just chilled on the bus and at the little café they had. After that the bus drove a little further to the research station. After a 20 minute orientation and introduction, we found groups and moved into our rooms. I was in room 4 with 7 other people. The room was basically big enough for 4 sets of bunk beds and a little room between them to walk. Then we met for morning tea, a briefing, and broke into groups to meet our tutors. We then took a trip out to the beach to see what animals we could find and just explore the area we had so that we could do a research project on Saturday. After about 25-30 minutes I was drenched. We saw tons of crabs, oysters, an eel, and some sponges. Then it was lunch time. After lunch, another briefing and then out to do a “seine net activity.” A seine net is a large net where you go out into the water and create like a U starting at the bottom and then once getting to the shore make it into an O. I was one of 8 people picked to go out and actually pull the net. The bottom of the net has weights on it that have to be pulled along the sand so the fish don’t escape so we had to drag our feet. It took about 20 minutes to go out and pull it back in. We caught 2 sting rays and a bunch of fish. We let all of them go since the point was to observe and not keep. Then we headed back to the station for afternoon tea. Since now we have seen what we can do and where we can go for our project, we decided what we were going to do. We were broken into 12 groups. My group decided to check species richness under and on the rocks at the rocky shores or sponges (the ones we passed on Friday) and see if rock/sponge size matters, aka bigger rocks have more species on them. This took all the way until dinner. After dinner was the “Aussie Film Fest.” We had the choice of like 15 Australian movies and we picked “Muriel’s Wedding.” We realized that this was a bad choice after watching it for a bit, but still finished it. Then off to bed.

On Saturday we got up bright and early to grab some food before heading to the shores for the project. It was bright and beautiful outside, unlike Friday. First, we did some research to try and figure out where we would find the largest number of sponges. Then we had morning tea and then made the decision to only check rocks. We set out a Transect (and area marked with measuring tape) 10 meters long and 2 meters wide on the rocky shores. We started to pick up rocks and count the number of animals. We measured the size by placing the rocks in a bucket filled with water and measured the displacement of the water. We were out for over an hour and a half and checked 32 rocks of different sizes. We then collected everything and grab some lunch and headed back to the computer lab to do more research and get our PowerPoint ready for the presentation that night. We worked from after lunch until dinner, with a break for afternoon tea. After dinner we did our presentations. All 12 groups presented and we were there for about 2 and a half hours sitting and listening. Afterwards, I was exhausted and went straight to bed.

7am Sunday morning was breakfast. After breakfast we packed up and cleaned the station before we left to Point Lookout. Point Lookout is a lookout over the ocean with huge rocks and it was gorgeous. I took tons of pictures. After that we headed to get some gelato. I had lime and coffee (two different scoops, not mixed). It was really good. Once we all ate that we walked along the beach to get over to Cylinder Beach. This was the beach where it was safe to swim and I certainly did. We spent 2 hours there and then headed back to the ferry to come back to campus. Once back I had some dinner and crashed.

It was a very fun and work filled weekend. I am glad that I don’t miss morning and afternoon tea, but I do miss the little snacks (cookies, cake, biscuits) that accompanied the tea. I am not looking forward to the write-up I have to do for the project but it’s for class so I have to do it. I am very happy to be back in my room that I am not sharing with anyone.