Morton Bay Research Station

I had a field trip for my marine science class this weekend. We drove to Morton Bay and took a ferry out to Stradbroke Island to do research projects and hang out for 3 days. All the kids in my class are international, so I was with mostly North Americans for the weekend along with some Germans, a girl from the Dominican Republic, and a Swedish guy. The group I was in did our project on comparing how many predatory animals are in the water at night compared with the day. We took a huge net with a float line and a sinker line and walked out into the water up to about waist height and then both sides walk in and you pull all the animals back in to shore that are in that section of the water. You really pick up a lot of different fish, and we counted tons of garfish, gobies, pike, leather jackets, longtoms, and many other fishes. One of the other groups caught a really big stingray and had to figure out how to untangle it from the net without getting stung. It was a few feet wide, but we saw some other rays that were even bigger, one of them went right by my feet when we were out waking around at one point. We all froze and were freaking out a bit until we were sure it was gone. Doing the netting at night was pretty awesome, we were out in the water really far because the tide was so far out. You can't use flashlights when you are doing the actual netting because it scares away the fish, so the only light we had was from the moon, it looked really neat. We caught a lot of squids and they were really cool. You can hold them in your hand with gloves on and they change colors and squirt ink out at you. We also got some pretty big crabs, a puffer fish, and a bunch of other fish. When we got back, my friend told me that her group leader had said that you couldnt pay him to go out in the water at night because there are sharks everywhere. That made me feel really safe, especially after our leader kept pulling out these leather jacket fish that can sting you from the net and throwing them right next to our legs in the water. She also said she saw a shark out in the water a ways off. We were also warned about blue octopi and stone fish that are in the area, both of which can kill you. It was good nobody got hurt, because all the talks about all the animals in the ocean that will kill you were a bit crazy.

I was talking with some of the other girls in my group, and we decided that Stradbroke Island really reminded us of the island in Lost. It was funny because we all thought the same things, for example, the rain shuts on and off really randomly. It will be sunny out, then torrential rain for a few minutes, then sun again. The plants were all rainforesty and the beaches were really nice, and we were staying at the research station that was similar to one of the Dharma Initiative stations. They even had a 'Duress' button on the wall, like in the hatch. Some people went out to a bar in 'town' during the night I was netting, and they said it was full of middle age fisherman that were creepy, just like 'the others' in Lost (a girl said they looked like the guy with the big beard that abducts Walt, like the fisherman on the frozen food packages). We were kindof pushing the similarities at that point, but it was pretty funny and we kept finding more ridiculous things in common with both islands.

The third day we were there we got to go to the other side of the island where there are nicer beaches (not just the harbor and tide pools) and hung out there and swam. The waves and current were pretty strong, I hadn't swum in water like that before but it was a lot of fun bodysurfing with everyone. The waves all came really quick one after the other, it wasn't very predictable so you had to pay attention. It was raining out too, but was still warm so a bunch of people were swimming. Some people played cricket on the beach, but I didn't make it over there, and cricket doesn't seem that great. Lots of standing around. One of the instructors said that the kangaroos in the canyons come down to the beach sometimes and swim in the ocean to get rid of parasites in their fur. Sounded pretty funny. We saw a couple of them in a park on the walk over to the beach, they really are like deer in America, just all over the place. In the end, it was a really neat trip and I was glad I signed up early and got to go on it.

Pictures are: my group leader holding a longtom, really big spider on the side of the road, the harbor, and shot walking down to the beach.