Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Reefs & Rainforest

What happened to the last two weeks in Australia?? 

I know you have been asking yourself this question day in and day out for the past month. I know you have been checking this blog every hour with bated breath, just hoping for word from your two favorite teacher-scientist-explorers. 

"What happened in Australia during your last two weeks?" you ask. A lot happened. Our greatest adventures yet! For starters we took our two biggest weekend trips: Cairns and Sydney. Big because they were the furthest distances from Townsville we had yet traveled, and big because we packed them full of adventures. In addition, exciting developments occurred in each of our respective labs. For Katelin, a fellow researcher expressed interest in purchasing the salinity probe she was developing. This caused a flurry of activity as all the scientists in her lab flocked to learn about her progress and help her see the project to completion. As for me, I was preparing samples for SEM, a process that proved much trickier than initially thought. In my last week in the lab I presented on an article on management of pests in open-water algae systems as part of our journal club, and also had the opportunity to take some fabulous photos on SEM. (More on that later.) 

But first, Cairns. 

Cairns is about 350 km north of Townsville, about a 4 hour drive. Being about 2 degrees latitude further north is subtle shift that makes Cairns warmer and more tropical. It is a place where the rainforest meets the sea. Oh, and it is pronounced "Cans." (Australians are notoriously soft on their "r's." )

We drove up Friday after work, arriving late in the evening. First thing we did was drive to the Cairns airport and pick up my good friend Yukari. Yukari is a friend of mine from Sarah Lawrence College. She studied Environmental Science and went on to have a career in sustainable investing. Originating from Japan, she spent nearly a decade in the United States before returning to Japan and then finally moving to Melbourne for graduate studies and a new job. She has been in Australia for a few years now and we asked her many questions concerning contrasting cultures from Japan, the US, and Australia. It was great to reconnect with this friend on the other side of the world, whom I don't get to see with much frequency!

But our first full day in Cairns we all went separate ways! Kaitlin wanted to try kayaking on the ocean and went to Fitzroy Island. Yukari also went to Fitzroy Island but more with the intention to beach it and do some hiking. As it turns out Fitzroy is a small island and both ran into each other more than once! 

As for me, I ran away and took a high speed catamaran to the Outer Reef. An hour and half ride out and one seasickness pill later, I was there. The sea was quite choppy and the ride was rough going out on account of a receding storm. However, as a result of the rain, we were treated to a beautiful rainbow, which all three of us enjoyed from our respective places.


Here is a video of me about to dive in at the Outer Reef. I was quite nervous as this was my first dive without my dive instructor. Also, all my training dives were done by walking in from the shore. This time I was jumping off the side of a ship into deep water with no land in sight. 


Once again I was transported to a magical world surrounded by fish and corals!


I took over 200 photos and video clips during my day of diving and snorkeling. I made two dives, both about 40 minutes in length. After my second dive I stayed in the water to continue snorkeling around the reef. I stayed in as long as I could. I think I snorkeled for over an hour. Finally the boat was about to leave and they blew a whistle to call me back in. If only I could survive like a grouper fish, I would have stayed there forever.

Here are just a few examples of some of the pictures I took:

I love the little fish that hovered in schools around many of the corals.





It should be noted, that the first notable thing I saw upon diving, was a shark. Yes, that's right, I swam with a shark!

Shark!
 As you can see, I kept a healthy distance!

Later, upon returning to the lab, I shared my dive pictures with my fellow scientists, almost all of whom are marine biologists with diving experience. They helped me identify a number of the species. They were quite impressed with some of the rare species I managed to capture by camera. For example, the following is the Chinese trumpetfish, Aulostomus chinesis, which has an unusual upturned mouth, and can hover vertically. It is fish-eater, and quite shy, so it is special that I was able to see it. 
 
The secretive Chinese trumpetfish, Aulostomus chinesis.
Then there were these guys:

Lizard fish, Synodus variegatus

I thought they were unusual because they were just sitting there on the coral, chillin'. Not busy swimming around like the other fish. You rarely see fish just sitting around, so this pair caught my attention. Again the lab was excited by my photo and identified the fish as a type of lizard fish. I believe the species is Synodus variegatus. One person in my lab said that apparently their numbers had dropped off for unknown reasons, and lizard fish had not been commonly seen in the past few years. So this was an exciting find.

Thanks again to a labmate (Hao) I was able to identify the following fish as a Moorish idol. Again, I just took the picture because it was pretty and different from any other fish I saw there. Turns out it was a rare fish indeed! Moorish idol, or Zanclus cornutus is the only extant member of its genus Zanclidae. Apparently they are solitary fish.


Moorish idol, or Zanclus cornutus
Then there was this beast:

Green humphead parrotfish, Bolbometopon muricatum
This impressive fish was easily over three feet long. I didn't know what it was, but I chased it around the reef a bit, which I don't think it liked, so I finally let it go. Upon later research I discovered it was green humphead parrotfish, Bolbometopon muricatum. Apparently this is the largest species of parrotfish that exists, sometimes reaching over 1.3m or 46 kg. (That's 4 feet, or 100 lbs.) This guy was definitely a full grown adult and on the larger end of the spectrum. Parrotfish, for those not in the know, have parrot-like beaks (actually made of teeth and jaw) that scrape algae from the reef. The are largely responsible for turning coral skeleton into sand, as the hard part of the reef passes through their digestive system and comes out as beautiful white sand on the other end. So thank a parrotfish next time you are enjoying some luminous white sand on your vacation.

Towards the end of my dive I saw this adorable pufferfish. Aside from their remarkable ability to puff up when frightened, pufferfish have some other special talents. Pufferfish eyes can move independently of one another, and they are very agile in water, able to swim forwards and backwards. 

Blackspotted pufferfish? Arothron nigropunctatus I believe.


I saw a number of giant clams that were quite lovely.

Giant clams.
There were also a number of impressive sea cucumbers that our dive guide boldly picked up and invited us to touch. (They were squishy.)

Leopard Sea Cucumber (Bohadschia argus)

I also tried to take many video clips while diving to capture both the feeling and sounds of diving, but also the fish behaviors. Unfortunately many of these videos are extremely jerky. I am still new to diving and I was constantly thinking about my buoyancy while diving, struggling to swim at the proper depth and not brush against any of the sensitive corals. The following video is one of the few relatively smooth pieces of footage I managed:


The following video is a bit shaky, but it captured some interesting behavior that is quite common on the reef: cleaning commensalism.  The large fish in this video is some kind of triggerfish, I believe it is a titan triggerfish, although with over 40 species of triggerfish, exact identification is difficult. It wasn't until reading about triggerfish later that I found out these fish are known to be quite aggressive and have been documented attacking divers. Oblivious to this fact, I got quite close and filmed it for a few minutes as it was getting cleaned. The smaller blue fish is some kind of cleaner wrasse. These little guys have a smart business. They set up stations at various points in the reef and wait until they have a customer, like this triggerfish. The larger fish will then hold still and open its mouth. The cleaner fish will move about the larger fish, picking off and eating any parasites or organisms growing on the bigger fish. It will even move inside its mouth and gills, giving a thorough cleaning. It is careful not to bite the fish, and the larger fish will not eat the wrasse. I saw this many times on the reef. Sometimes the cleaner wrasses hitch a ride and stay with the larger fish for some time.


 And one final video. I got some beautiful footage of a sting-ray swimming. Yes, in addition to sharks, I swam among sting rays. 



It was an amazing day on the reef. I have so many more photos of fish I could talk about, but I think I have given enough information. It is incredible that I took over 200 photos from just one day of diving. It is a testament to the extravagant biodiversity on the Great Barrier Reef.

But wait, there's more!

That was only Day 1 or our two days in Cairns!! That evening I reunited with my scientifically minded friends and we swapped stories. The next day we decided to explore the rainforest together! Unlike the reef, land animals tend to hide during the day, so I don't have any worthy pictures of animals. But it was wonderful to be in a different ecosystem that was also rich in biodiversity. We took the skyrail to Kuranda, a small town atop a mountain in the rainforest. The skyrail sails you above the canopy for 7.5 km and makes two stops allowing you to walk the understory as well. It was an amazing way to see the rainforest! 

Here are my two friends, one of whom was quite pinkened by the Queensland sun while on Fitzroy.

Yukari & Kaitlin in the Skyrail

Here are a shots of one of the walkways at a skyrail stop:
 

 There was a beautiful waterfall visible on one of the stops, although the waterfall is only a trickle compared to the rainy season.

  
Barron Falls
After visiting Kuranda, we took an old historic train back down through the rainforest. Here is Barron Falls again, as seen from the other side from the train:

Barron Falls
 And in fact there were several beautiful waterfalls along the train ride, like this one:


Our train! Taking it slow in a difficult curve!
It was a long drive home after two very full days, but it was worth it. On the drive home we hit a red light in the middle of the highway due to construction. There were no cars behind us and no clouds in the sky. It was a moonless night. We craned our necks out the car windows and marveled at the expanse of the Milky Way as we had never seen it before and contemplated our place in the universe and how fortunate we were to be alive and in Australia!