Just Keep Swimming! Just Keep Swimming!
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If you can’t already tell from the title, this blog will be heavily fish-related. Sorry, not sorry!
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to stay at Lizard Island Research Station for 11 days with my entire program. We completed a marine research project (more on that later), marveled at the Great Barrier Reef, and visited one of the world’s most prestigious research stations!
The only way to get to the island was by taking these tiny planes chartered from Cairns Airport. We were limited to 15kg of luggage total (~33 lbs), which sounds just as limiting as it was. The plane had all kinds of hidden compartments for storing our luggage, and we had to charter three planes to take all of us over!
As someone who is prone to motion sickness, the idea of getting on this plane was…. shaky, to say the least. It also didn’t help that I had forgotten to take my motion sickness medicine at breakfast. Shockingly though, I didn’t feel sick at all! Even when the plane decided to toss us around a bit when we flew straight through a cloud for a little bit…
On the island, we stayed in bunks in houses specifically available for researchers. My house was Kirby House, and despite not having any air conditioning and being full of geckos, it was pretty perfect. All the windows had screens, and at night you’d get a breeze blowing through the room. In the morning, you either woke up to birds chirping outside or the sun hitting you right in the face bright and early.
Lizard Island is also home to a FIVE STAR resort. We obviously did not go inside the resort, but they have a small bar off the resort that is open to the public. Getting to the bar was a trek! 45 minutes of trudging through sand in the heat.
The burgers and fries were worth the journey (sadly, I was so hungry I didn’t take a photo), and the sunset wasn’t too bad either!
Well, enough about the boring stuff… onto the reef!
The bulk of our time at Lizard was spent working on a marine research project investigating different species of fish. My fish were the Spiny Chromis and the Lemon Damselfish! The aim of the study was to see if these species used their habitat differently in order to determine their vulnerability to habitat changes.
This is where things get fun…
To actually research this project, we spent five days snorkeling at two different reefs (Octopus Gardens and Horseshoe Reef). At each reef, we went to the flat and crest of the reef to count the abundance of each species and survey the coral types they were at. Each day, we spent about two hours snorkeling for observations, and about one hour just messing around in the sea. There was a lot of diving off the boats or just exploring the reef looking for cool stuff!
Highlights were:
We also saw an octopus, many large stingrays, and an eel!
In case you were wondering about the results of the project, my two species did show differences in habitat and abundance! Barely! Kinda! After a lot of messing and transforming of the data!
It sounds more grim than it was, but yeah… the data was interesting, to say the least. Luckily, though, it was enough to write a paper on, so yay fish!
If you’re interested in the paper, I’d be happy to show it off. I will, however, not be happy to try to explain any of the results. It was still a super fun project, and I’m grateful we were able to do it. So to tie all this into the title of this blog, even when your data is challenging… just keep swimming! And swimming and swimming!
Thank you to Lizard Island Research Station for the experience, and to all the creatures of the Great Barrier Reef for showing themselves to us!
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