Heron Island

My week on Heron Island officially began when we all met in Gladstone to take a Catamaran to the island, which was quite an experience in itself. In short it was the most brutal ride I have ever taken in my life. The open ocean is just so much more powerful than I could have ever imagined. For two hours we were thrown around violently, by the Pacific Ocean, until we reached Heron. All I can say to describe it is that it was like the worst airplane turbulence I have ever experienced, times ten. The Catamaran is the only way to reach the island unless you are willing to spend a whole lot of money on a helicopter ride. When I am trying to fall asleep I still feel like I’m on a boat…

Once we got off the boat things got a whole lot better. We found ourselves on a tropical island (well, the Tropic of Capricorn runs right through the island, so half of the island is in the sub-tropics while the other is in the tropics) with nothing but wide-open ocean all around us. The island sits on top of Heron Reef, which is part of the Great Barrier Reef. The reef extends about 11 kilometers and the actual island takes up just 840 meters of that, its very small. We could walk all the way around it in just 25 minuets.

The Heron Island Research Station, where we were staying, takes up one half of the island, while the other half is devoted to a really fancy resort. As you walk away from the station and towards the resort, everything changes. People are dressed nicely and families with lots of kids are everywhere. Some of us went over there in the evenings for drinks at the bar. Also the resort runs on a different time zone than the research station, the resort was an hour ahead. Back on the station there was another student group from University of Cali schools that were also doing research at the station. However, they seemed to be working a whole lot harder than us. Whenever I saw them they were in lab, or in a lecture or collecting data on the reef.

Except for the test that we took at the end of the week, our time on heron was fairly relaxing. It was hard to remember that I was at school while in such an amazing place. The day started with breakfast at 7:00 followed usually by a lecture and a mid morning tea and cake. We then usually spent the rest of the morning collecting data on the reef and then had lunch, did a bit more work and had another snack and then went snorkeling. We would usually snorkel right off the beach but they took us on two boat snorkels, which were absolutely breathtaking. The boat took us to right outside the reef, where it drops off into the open ocean. The marine life is incredible, it’s a whole other world. Bright neon fish both big and small, coral like you wouldn’t believe, sharks, stingrays and sea turtles were just some of the highlights. We also did one night snorkel which brings out a whole other world of life that only comes out at night. We each had an underwater flashlight and had to attach cylumes (glow sticks) to the tops of our snorkels so that the people on the jetty (dock) could count us to make sure that we were all still there.

At night we also spent time walking along the beach looking for turtle hatchlings that were scurrying out of their nest, down the beach and into the water and mother turtles that were coming up the beach to lay eggs. Of the seven species of sea turtles in the world, six of them are found in the Great Barrier Reef. Heron Island is known as a nesting place for Green Turtles. Mother turtles, who are between 40 and 90 years old, come up the beach to lay their eggs at night during the summer months. They dig a big sand pit, lay their eggs and return to the ocean until the next time they are ready to lay. We saw lots of turtles while snorkeling; they are huge, 4 or 5 feet long. Also at night we could see baby hatchlings erupting from their nest and going into the water. The hatchlings know where the water is because they feel the magnetic pull of the moon. They are about four inches long and so unbelievably cute. If you stood by the waters edge, you could feel them scampering over your toes.

It’s actually quite sad because sea turtles are almost endangered species. The statistic is that only 1 out of every 1000 hatchlings actually make it to adults. There are so many natural and un-natural predators. Sometimes we would watch a set of hatchlings make the long journey into the water just to see a seagull pick the turtle off the top of the water and fly off with it in its beak. This makes it all the more incredible to see the mother turtles slowly walking up the beach at age 50 or 60 to lay eggs, because you know that they were once one of thousands of scurrying hatchlings making their way out to sea.

Leaving Heron was bittersweet, because of the immense amount of sand that got absolutely everywhere! It was hard to get back on the Catamaran and leave such an amazing place that I am sure I will never have a chance to go back to. After ten hours of travelling we arrived back in Brisbane for a much needed day of laundry and Internet. Tomorrow morning we leave to go camping and do more biology in the Lamington Plateau, which is a rainforest. We will spend a week in Lamington and after that the trip is almost over, only a few more days until I go to New Zealand.

Ps. Just so you all know, I will not have internet again until April 19th.