Last week was a regular school week, class, doing homework, hanging out. The weekend, however, was not as typical. A group of students from my marine science class had the opportunity to go to Stradbroke Island in Moreton Bay and do “research” of some marine life. We left UQ at 7:30 Saturday morning, and took a bus to Cleveland and got on a ferry out to the island, arriving at the research center around 9:30 I think, I don’t really remember, I was sleeping. When we got there, we got a safety speech, about all of the highly poisonous things that we could run into while we were there. After that we got settled into our rooms, which were pretty small with 4 sets of bunk beds, and then had a quick lunch. We then went out to the shore, where one of the instructors had put out a net of some kind and was in the process of dragging it in. Once it was in, he went through and talked about all of the different species of things he had caught. There were a few different kinds of fish, a couple rays, and a little shark I think. They were all really cool, and we could touch/hold some of them. After that we had our afternoon tea, and then went out to the rocky shore to explore. We walked around the rocky shore, looking at different crabs, oysters, snails, sea cucumbers, all kinds of crazy things. The rocky shore slowly turned into a sandy shore, and once we were there we saw starfish, eels, more crabs, more sea cucumbers, and a blue ringed octopus, which was one of those deadly things we were talked about earlier. Its poison shuts down certain voluntary muscles, including those that allow you to breathe, so rapidly that we wouldn’t be able to make the 5 minute walk to the health center before we would have been in serious trouble. So we didn’t touch it.

Our evening activities were cancelled because of the rain, so we got to start working on our research projects. We were divided into groups of 5 or 6, and our group could do any marine life related research we wanted. Our group decided to look into where on the shore hermit crabs would prefer to live, and if there was any correlation to that with size. After deciding that, we had dinner, and then the rest of the night to just hang out. There were some people from Austria on our trip, and I ended up hanging out with them that night, and learned two new card games that you play with some weird German playing cards, called Schnapsen and Trousers-Down. They were both pretty easy to pick up, and a fun way to pass the time.

Sunday morning we had breakfast at 7, and then had all day to work on our projects. The morning we spent doing research, as we were waiting for the tide to go out. After lunch, we went out to the shore and collected data, and then came back to the research center to analyze it and put together a presentation. The presentations started after dinner, and took a couple hours to go through. After they were over, we again had the night to ourselves, and I ended up playing more cards and other games, but with a different group of people.

Monday started early as well, as we had to clean our rooms and the research station before leaving at 9:30. Our bus left a little late, and it took us across the island to Lookout Point, where we hiked around the edge of the island looking at cool rock formations, beaches, and little islands. The hike took a couple hours, mostly because we were all taking so many pictures along the way, and ended at a beach where our lunch was waiting for us. After eating, we had a few hours to hang out on the beach or swimming. I went swimming, and the rip of the ocean was the strongest I have ever felt. I was trying to walk out to deeper water, except the rip was so strong I could barely walk forward, and the water wasn’t even over my waist. But once we were out a little ways, the rip calmed down. We left the beach around 3, and took a bus/ferry/bus combination to get back to UQ around 6. Now I have a lot of assignments due this week, and only wrote this blog to procrastinate, so I have to go do that now.