Why I need to learn how to dry suit dive or OMG GREAT WHITE SHARKS!!!!!!

So everyone who reads this blog probably already knows about my obsession with sharks, heck the title of the blog gives it away. So I’ll give you three guesses as to what I did next, yep, cage diving! I hoped on a plane to Port Lincoln to see the great whites. When I got there I was very surprised. I have never seen a smaller airport in my entire life. You know in the movies when they take a “big city” character and take them to the country like Alaska, or Podunk nowhere; this was it. The entire thing was one tiny runway and the terminal was maybe the size of a gate at an average airport, maybe smaller. I was so confused. So I managed to get into town and get settled and the fact that this was a small, non-touristy town really hit home. There were minimal restaurants, maybe three hotels in the entire town, and there only seemed to be three things advertized over and over again; tuna farm tours, swim with seals, and cage diving. So I spent a total of 4 hours and explored most of the town that was in walking distance and spent the rest of the time catching up on sleep; whooh, so exciting. The next day I got up really early and pilled in a tour van with several other tourists and headed out to the harbor. We took a 2 hour boat ride to get to a marine reserve and the minute we got there, two 3+ meter sharks started swimming around the boat. Omg they were huge, and hungry! As soon as bait ht the water they grabbed it and ran. It was so fast I had trouble taking pictures of them.

Omnomnomnom!

We got suited up in 7mm wet suits and headed into the water. Holy cow it was cold!! Think of the coldest swim you’ve ever had, and then think colder. That was the last thing on my mind though as I span around, looking for sharks. The activity quieted down quickly as there was another boat also feeding them so they became less willing to take the bait. When the did, wow did they move fast! One darted up the side of the cage and dived back down before my brain registered what I saw. All of a sudden instead of blue there was a large white belly in front of my face and then it was gone! Luckily I did catch some video, it was absolutely fantastic. When I did come out I was so cold, when I took a shower I couldn’t feel it, gah!!! I was so tired after that I went to take a nap and woke up around midnight. That was unfortunately the end of my adventure in Port Lincoln as weather was too bad to swim with the seals the next day, oh well, that's the ocean for you.

Beware the blurry shark!

Living the documentary, swimming Blue Planet

I spent the rest of the week with my friend from Cairns relaxing and shopping for family and friends (shhh your Christmas presents are a secret!). At the end of the week I packed my backpack and boarded the Taka for a week long live aboard dive trip. It was simply, amazing. There really isn’t any other word for it. It was like 5 days of living a documentary or Blue Planet. I met some really cool people; from the crew to the passengers, everyone was a blast! To organize things I will describe everything day by day.

Saturday

Our first dive was at Challenger Bay, an easy warm up dive, regardless of it’s name. We spent most of it practicing with our dive buddies and acclimating, there wasn’t that much to see as it was mostly sand. The next 2 dives were at Cod Hole, famous for, you guessed it, potato cod. There was so much to see, from the large cod, to the tiniest nudibranch. One we found was seriously the size of my thumbnail, it was so tiny and colorful too. While we were there our tour group had a cod feeding where the crew fed the cod around you and you could pet them! They were completely unafraid of us and didn’t shy away from the occasional pat or scratch. 

                                          One very friendly potato cod

One got so close to me it brushed the top of my head as it swam past! The next dive was slightly nerve wracking as it was my first night dive. Not because of sharks or anything like that, but because of the current and possibly losing someone or the boat. When we descended it was the weirdest feeling. It was like I was a astronaut floating in space. The only thing you could see was the green glow of the boat lights and the beams of other group’s dive lights, it felt very similar to a scifi movie; the boat was the mother ship and we were scouts exploring the surface of an undiscovered planet. This dive we did at Challenger Bay and it looked completely different at night. Travallies swam between our dive lights, looking for prey in our beams as a white tip reef shark ghosted through the coral. It was so alien and wonderful. On a less spectacular note part of our group, including me got separated and we could no longer see the lights from the boat, oops. Luckily we had one of the instructors with us and we surfaced a good ways away from the boat. Calmly we lit ourselves up with our dive lights and waited for the dingy. We were thrown a rope and told to ‘hang on’. Suddenly Whoosh! We were being pulled back to the boat, which was cool because we like an underwater scooter, or what I imagine its like. After that we watched sharks swim at the surface in the light of the boats and hunt little fish. They would calmly swim in circles and then charge, snapping up a fish in the teeth! That night we headed out to Osprey reef, which is 4 hours by helicopter from shore. The ride out there was the bumpiest ride I’ve ever had, which didn’t help because we had to sleep. After nearly being thrown from the top bunk I pulled the mattress to the floor and slept on the floor instead.

Sunday

Sunday was all about Osprey reef. I don’t remember the name of our first site, but we had a shark feeding there!!!!!! Squee!!!!!!!!!! (I couldn’t possibly use enough exclamation points to emphasize how excited I was!) The crew made us hug the walls of the reef, sitting so we could all see, but far enough away from the action that we wouldn’t be accidently be bit. They then lowered giant frozen tuna heads on a chain and tied it to the reef. After they released those heads, it was a feeding frenzy! 

                                          Omnomnom tuna!

So, many sharks, there were at least 20; white tip reef and grey reef sharks were everywhere, chomping happily on frozen fish. Halfway into the feeding one instructor was pointing excitedly in one direction, at the huge oceanic silvertip swimming in from the open blue water. It was a big deal, because oceanic silver tips are open water fish and are naturally skittish. We had three visit us and participate in the feeding, how lucky is that! No, I did no feel scared during the feeding; the sharks kept their distance both before, during, and after the feeding. I also got stung, by coral. Yeah, they can do that, oops. It wasn’t too bad, it just itched for a bit. After that we headed out to Halfway Wall, another first for me on that trip. You don’t fully appreciate how deep the ocean until you look down and there is nothing but blue below you. Halfway Wall is basically the edge of a shallow portion of Osprey reef that plummets to 1000 m (I was constantly chanting ‘don’t drop your camera, don’ drop your camera’ in my head the entire dive). We got to see several endemic species at that site (species only found in that area or that site, in the world!) Brightly colored pyramid butterfly fish and anemone fish swam among us as we floated by fire coral and anemone. During part of the dive we swam under an over hang and if you looked above you, you’d see fish swimming upside down! (Very disorienting.) The next dive was at the Entrance, a series of coral bommies that lead to the inner circle of Osprey reef. During that dive we got to see sweetlips, reef sharks, fire dart fish, and Christmas tree worms!

Monday

We left Osprey reef and headed towards sites like the Clam Gardens! I really don’t think it should have been called that as there weren’t that many clams, but there were plenty of parrotfish! They were every wear and so colorful! They were so bright that they made Woodstock look monochrome! I even saw a sea cucumber move! For non-divers that is significant, because they normally look like sausages laying on the bottom. I even got video of it! It looks like its roaring! After that we headed out to Steve’s Bommie, or the pillar of death, because there are so many venomous things hanging out in that particular spot. We saw eels, more nudibranches, nemos, lionfish, and stonefish, one of the most venomous fish in the ocean! However, it is pretty much the most poorly designed fish in the ocean.

                                       He's sad because he failed evolution

 It has no swim bladder, so it can’t float and can’t swim very well, trust me I’ve seen it. It also has this permanent scowl on its face, like it knows your laughing at it because it fails so spectacularly. It sits on the bottom most of the time, so you can only get stung if you step on it. Since we were diving we were fine. I spent a good amount of time at the site schooling with these yellow striped fish. It was so much fun! I would swim in and they would move away, but when I stopped and floated they schooled around me, I was an honorary fish, my dream has come true!

                                                    Going to "school"

 The last dive of the day was another night dive, no we did not get lost this time. The site was called the Beer Gardens because a loggerhead turtle frequently sleeps there (Haha, dive humor). In addition to the couch sized sleeping turtle we also saw sleeping parrot fish and a peacock mantis shrimp! These shrimp are super colorful and very bold. They’re about the size of your forearm and have two large balls of hardened calcium on the claws that they use to whack they’re prey on the head and kill them. They’ve been known to crack camera lenses and 2cm thick glass! With boxing gloves like that I’d be pretty cocky too!

Tuesday

On the last day e only had two dives, this time on Norman reef. Even though it is a more visited reef and therefore more damaged, there was plenty to see. I got to see a baby lionfish, a green turtle, and flatworms (which look like colorful handkerchiefs that have bunny ears). I also got up close and personal to a white tip reef shark. It was sitting on the bottom in the sand and I decided to join it, and it didn’t swim away! It let me take a few pictures before it decided that it had enough and swam off.

                                           One very unimpressed fish...

 This particular part of my travels was very significant for me and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. It makes everything I’ve learned and hope to do more significant and personal. Instead of a fact on a flashcard it’s now are living creature I can associate with. Cheesy as it sounds it was life changing.

Advanced placement and questionability of Australian hostels

So after several adventures later, cosplay, Halloween, Full Moon Parties, zombie walks, and finals (if you want to know about them you can just ask) I finally got the chance to get my advanced diver’s certification. So, I hoped on a boat to Maggie Island to get certified at the local dive shop. When I got there they told me my certification would involve 5 dives and reading of a few chapters from the dive handbook. Let me repeat that, 5 dives and a few chapters…what? It took me months to get my open water cert and now it’ll take 2 days? I love Australia! So after that I dawdled around, met some of the local wallabies (they are so cute, but the way they swarm you is very intimidating you see one and suddenly, they’re all around you. It was like the marsupial version of The Birds) and went to my accommodations. The accommodations were nice enough, but on a weird and kind of gross note I did find a cane toad in one of the toilets (Ew Mr. Toad, just ew).

The next day the sweetest cat greeted me as I embarked for my dive. This cute little grey tabby was rubbing up against my leg and purring! He escorted me to the front walk and plopped down in a sunbeam to see me off, so cute! So the first dive was for buoyancy control, which any diver can tell you, is a pain to initially work out. After that it was underwater navigation. Anyone who has ever been in the car or traveled with me, knows I am directionally challenged at the best of time. Needless to say, my first attempt was way off the mark. The other ones, surprisingly, went great I found the line easily. I can easily navigate a square, triangle, and using the terrain, I just can navigate back and forth in a straight line…go me. The last dive of the day was a wreck dive of the Moltke, a German cargo boat 150m off of Geoffrey Bay. So my dive instructor and I paddled out on our backs to the buoy and started our descent. The visibility was abysmal. I could see about 2m in front of my face. Plus I was having trouble staying down because the instructor insisted that I only needed 2 weights when I knew I needed 3; but I did see some awesome wild life! The first was this huge crayfish the size of my arm! We also saw a nudibranch (before anyone wisecracks or says nudi-what? It's a type of gastropod that kind of looks like a sea slug that comes in nearly every color you can think of) and I saw my first shark!!!!!!!! Before you ask, did it bite you, were you scared, no I wasn’t. It was a 3 foot epaulet shark, virtually harmless and probably more scared of us as it swam away as soon as we saw it.

            The next day I had to wake up extra early to catch a bus to get on a boat, to do my last two dives on the Yongola Wreck. I spent 20 minutes waiting for the bus, being stared down by a bird whose name I forget, as I munched on an apple. The bird even hissed at me, like a raptor, weird bird. So one long and bumpy boat ride and gear up, we dove down 100ft to explore the S.S. Yongola, one of Australia’s most famous wrecks and one of the world’s best dive sites.

 I was a little nervous about diving so deep, but going down was very easy. As soon as we began our descent down the guide line, dozens of silvery tarpon were swimming around us, and suddenly we hit bottom…right next to the largest stingray I’ve ever seen!! I was literally bigger than me, just chilling out in the sand. Why do you need to hide? You’re bigger than almost anything that could eat you! We spent our last two dives exploring the wreck. There was so much to see, you could see for 20+ meters and there were fish everywhere! We saw eels, wrasse, barracuda, and at least 3 different types of sea snakes! One in particular decided to get real friendly and moseyed over my way, my response “lets just be friends” and slowly scooted away.  I also had a lot of fun trying to school with a small group of very big barracuda, they didn’t seem to mind. The best part of the trip was the second dive. We were swimming towards the bow when the instructor started pointing emphatically under the bow. Not thinking much of it, I took my time getting there, derping about, and finally looked under the ship… holy…cow…Under the boat was the largest fish I’ve ever seen, bar a shark. The fish was easily twice my size and looked so heavy it was anyone’s guess how it could swim. Apparently this grouper is called V.W., who visits the wreck from time to time. He’s called V.W. because he is the same size and a V.W. mini bus!!!! Not kidding! The pictures do not do justice to his size. It’s estimated that he weighs about 400 kg! After that experience and one bumpier ride later I officially joined the ranks of advanced diver! Yeah! However, there was no time to celebrate. 

The next day a couple of friends and I hopped on to a bus and began the long ride up to Cairns and the Daintree rainforest!!!! The tour group we picked gave us the option of staying overnight, in the rainforest, so of course we took that option. We visited several sites like Port Douglas, swam in Mossman Gorge, and took a river tour to croc spot! We saw a few of them, it was very difficult as they were very well camouflaged. Creepy (shivers). After that we were dropped off at the hostel. After dumping our gear we spent the rest of the day relaxing on the beach and taking goofy pics.

 We didn’t go swimming of course since stinger season was in full swing. (Will jellyfish always ruin swimming for me?). After that one of my friends, Line, and I decided to go on a (toured) night walk in the rainforest. Our guide, oddly enough, was German. We ended up not having a single Australian on the tour. While picking up others, our guide brought us over to see something in the bushes next to the hostel reception. It was a snake; not just any snake, but an eastern brown snake, the second most deadly snake in all of Australia. It was in front of the reception parking lot, yikes! Fortunately no one did anything stupid and the snake paid no attention to us. This was not the only time we saw snakes in less than ideal places. We saw two other snakes in the area around our hostel, none on the night walk, in the rainforest, but around the hostel…uhhhhh. There was also tons of large, very colorful, and probably venomous spiders everywhere too. Oddly enough, we didn’t see snakes or many spiders, but we did see forest dragons, toads, and some other lizards. We even got to see glowing fungus!!! It was mine and Line’s favorite part of the tour! (Bio geeks unite!) However, to see the moss everyone had to turn their flashlights off, ack! Fortunately nothing happened. The next day we spent walking along one of the beaches, which was absolutely beautiful. The sky and sea were so blue and the sand felt wonderful on my feet. The beach was covered in little crabs burrowing in the sand, resulting in piles of sand balls everywhere! We even saw some Ulysses butterflies; they’re the iridescent (shiny!) blue butterflies you usually see in rainforest advertisements. After that we had some time to kill so we visited the local bat conservation center. We got to feed one of the old bats and the caretaker even let us hold one of the baby bats! (I got to hold Stellaluna!!!!! I never thought I would say that). Unfortunately we had to head back to Cairns and the group split up to travel to different places.

Stellaluna is sleepy, time for a cuddle!

Yes I'm alive, no a shark didn't eat me

Okie dokie, sorry this blog has been dead for so long. I keep forgetting that I have this thing and the moment I do remember is the moment I am no where near my computer. Aside from that, I’m going to try to relay the last couple months for the amusement of anyone still reading this. Ok, right, Orpheus Island. For the Australia version of uni spring break certain classes can gobble up this time for fieldwork and trips so instead of a week you have 3-4 days…if you only have one class with a field trip. So for Coral Reef Ecology we all had to do field work on Orpheus Island. Sounds interesting, right?... You’d be completely wrong, it was fantastic! Basically Orpheus Island is a remote island accessible only by boat and the only thing on it besides forest is a small research station and an exclusive resort. It was gorgeous! It was basically untouched reef, it was so colorful, and we were allowed to touch it! Everyday we would get up and spend hours in the ocean snorkeling our like crazy gathering data for various student made projects. Not only that., but we were also allowed to interact with it! Our professor told us that was the only way we could fully learn, so he said we could handle the coral! That never happens! Granted we had to make sure there was no sun block on our hands so we wouldn’t harm the coral. A lot of vigorous scrubbing of hands occurred before every survey. Coral wasn’t the only thing in the water. We saw lots of colorful fish! They were swimming all around us; angelfish darted in front of our faces, butterfly fish and snails everywhere and, as a special surprise Christmas tree worms! There’s a pic of them down below. They are a small worm that attaches to hard substrate, like rock or dead coral and filter feed. When predator (or your hand) causes a change in the water movement, they withdraw themselves into the rock. Fun fact they were the inspiration for the retractable plant in one of the early sequences in Avatar! Biology, its awesome! On a less positive note afternoon work was a bit of a pain (literally) because at low tide and with a current we were accidently bumping into coral constantly. You could I.D. coral from the mucus imprints on our butts basically. Everyone ended up with coral scraps and cuts on their hands. Luckily no one got infected. It wasn’t all work though; we also got to do a fun snorkel very early in the morning in the mangroves. Looking for baby sharks! We didn’t find any unfortunately, but swimming the mangroves was the best maze I’ve ever been in. We did see one from the shore one day though. That day before dinner everyone was just hanging around napping and recouping, when some one shouted “Shark!” In a flash every student, whether lazing about, working, or sleeping, jumped up and ran towards the beach. Nearly everyone was there looking and chattering excitedly about where it had gone ( we probably scared it away, as some had run into the water)… yeah we’re weird like that, marine biologist are the only one who will run towards the water when someone yells shark. Self preservation, what’s that? We are scientists!

After half a week was up we packed up and headed back to JCU, only to get on a bus the next morning and head down to Arlie Beach. Nine of us went, we took up a while room at the hostel we stayed at. We spent the rest of our week swimming, lazing around on the beach and catamaraning. No, we didn’t sail it, we took a tour on one around the islands, I’m not coordinated enough to crew a ship. We had such a short time that we thought we’d get a nice summary sailing around the islands. It was very relaxing. During our tour we took a break on White Haven beach, home to the palest, finest sand I’ve ever seen. Fine ground, natural silica sand feels absolutely heavenly between your toes, it felt like the dust I used to fill my chinchilla’s dust bath. All of us decided to roll around in it and imitate sugar cookies (because silica sand is a good exfoliate!). Several f the locals said hi as well, three lace moniter lizards and a massive green turtle. We also spent some time snorkeling as well. It wasn’t as impressive as Orpheus, but then again there is a lot more human traffic in the area, so it wasn’t surprising, it was still nice though. So that was my “Spring Break”. I’ve much more to chat about, my advanced dive course, the rainforest, diving in the Coral Sea, but I’ve got to be rested for tomorrows cage dive, with great whites! Here’s hoping I see a few! Got any question or just want to rant about my lack of keeping up with the blog? Leave a comment below!