Orpheus Island

Wow I have been slacking on this blog. My apologies. Anyways here is a brief recap on my wonderful weekend (two weeks ago) at Orpheus Island. We left JCU at 4:30am and drove 2 hours north of Townsville. From here, our class left for the island in three shifts, the ferry taking about 16 people at a time and taking about an hour each trip. It had been raining off and on and this proved to be a weekend trend. The point of our Coral Reef Geomorphology course going to Orpheus was not as a vacation, although, the only other thing on the island is a 5 star resort: $2000 per night. We were doing surveying field work to study sea level change in relation to various reef features. Enough of the science. The important thing to know is we did field work all day Saturday, all day Sunday and had to turn in a group report before we departed the island. Besides getting to meet backslash hang out with some really cool people, the highlights of the weekend were snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). I was able to go out three times (twice off of the research boats). We saw huge giant clam beds and a lot of beautiful coral.The weekend was really awesome. The research station is 100% eco-friendly. They use compostable toilets, all of their water comes from rainfall, showers are limited to three minutes (one per day). The scenery was as equally impressive as the facilities. Mangroves clung to the beaches, dipping into the interior and eventually morphing into rainforest with elevation. The beaches ranged from boulder, to sand, to coral. When it was low tide, wonderful reef flats stood exposed leaving behind shallow pools and exposed marine life. Such a good place to be both for the geeky scientist and the natural explorer.

In general the weekend was a blast. I was really excited though to come back to Pauls and see all of my friends. That and the fact that I was so tired after getting only like 15 hours of sleep in 4 days and I really needed a shower and clean clothes. Clutch.