Another fab weekend!

This past weekend was a good one. Friday evening I went with Greg & Michelle to play pool & drink Guinness after work. The pool contest was close, and may require a rematch. The Guinness drinking was really nice - but potentially not an excellent plan before my dive in the morning..

Saturday: Got up at 5.30am to prepare for a dive - not feeling completely on top of the world. But I had a Berocca and several cups of tea, and once we'd hit the water I wasn't feeling quite so terrible. We dived up round Halifax park to do the deep dive. This site is closer to the mouth of the bay so when the tide really gets going it is very very strong - as we felt on our way up, when we did a little underwater climbing to crawl our way out. I really enjoyed this dive - got my buoyancy a little better, saw lots of critters, fed some urchins to the blue groupers (this is allowed because they actually have a culling license for the urchins because they are harming the reef), and saw lots more nudibranchs! 

Relaxing after the dive

Later in the day Doug, Jenny and I went for a short drive to the Gan Gan lookout and had a look at the stunning views from the top. The Rotary Club of Nelson Bay were actually recently involved in the refurbishment of this lookout, and I have to say it looks very smart!

One of the views from the lookout

After this we went for a bit of a wander around along some beaches and round the marina. Whilst on our wander we came across a lovely gentleman who was exercising  his turtle and drinking his whisky. I got to hold the turtle! (but not the whisky)

This might be one of my life aims now - to be able to take my turtle
out for a drink at the beach on a sunny Saturday afternoon 

On the Sunday I had a lie-in! And then I went to visit Geoff Diemer's oyster farm and he gave me a tour of how it all works. It was really interesting to see everything in context to the industry rather than just from a research point of view. I was shown the young oyster nursery area, and talked through the process of moving them around throughout their life.  We also went out on the boat and had a check of the oysters out in the bay - and I tried a nude oyster super fresh! I still think I prefer them a little warm and with a bit of lemon though.

Where the young (very tiny) oysters spend their days

The machine which quickly grades the oysters into
different sizes

Not a bad day to be out on the boat looking at the oysters!

About to try an oyster fresh from the sea
(I am pleased that I can make my face
look this ridiculous)

Geoff kindly donated to me a bag of oysters to share with Jenny & Doug - which we ate immediately when I returned home. We threw them on the barbecue - which makes them open (saving the process of opening them by hand and risking stabbing myself with the shucking knife), and then used the lemons from the tree in the garden to season them once they were hot. I am actually really warming to oysters now - probably not a taste I can afford to get used to.. And we ate our oysters with a couple of G&Ts made using the limes from the garden. A really excellent end to a lovely weekend!

Dinner :)

More diving!

Me looking super professional (minus my floaty feet) 

 
I have very nearly finished my Padi Advanced Open Water qualification! Yesterday I got up at 4am (4 IN THE MORNING) to go diving. Now this isn't a time of day (night) that I normally see so I was very very not awake. I tried to solve this by drinking a very large red bull on the way to the dive centre, which actually just made me feel exceedingly unwell for the next few hours. I wouldn't recommend this.

We had a good relaxing first dive at Fly Point, working on my buoyancy and kicking (apparently I have been kicking wrongly - for the last 4 years..). The visibility wasn't as good as it had been previously (around 4m) - probably due to the recent mass fall of rain which will have washed lots of sediment into coastal waters from the land. But the plus side to this is that it means you look really closely for little animals - and we found LOADS OF NUDIBRANCHS. This dive was just over an hour long and this meant that by the end the tide was really beginning to cause quite strong currents around us - especially in shallow water, it became super difficult to swim back in (which was good in a way because all the swimming warmed me up again!).

Look at this happy fellow!

After this dive we returned to the dive centre for a change of tank, quick hot shower, and 1 or 2 cups of tea/soup. Then we went straight out again to do the 'Navigation training dive' in a different location. This dive is designed so that I could practise my nav skills underwater - using a compass and kick cycles to return to a previous location / swim a certain route. We had perfect conditions for testing my compass use BECAUSE THE CONDITIONS WERE TERRIBLE. The visibility was around 1m and the surge was super powerful. So it felt like I had absolutely no control over where we were. But (miraculously) I managed to navigate correctly! And we also saw a tiny octopus with his little garden - octopus will often collect shells and other objects (including glass) to make little houses around where they are resting.

I took lots of pictures whilst diving but Trudie took more pictures - and with a much better camera. There is an amalgamation of our photos on here - the brighter, more detailed ones are Trudie's pictures - I will not steal the credit.

The tiny octopus we found

I think this is some form of Goatfish. But I could
be wrong about this - LOOK AT THOSE WHISKERS

This little guy has made this very old plaque his
territory - every time we pretended to go into his
territory he got really angry and tried to chase us away

And here are some of the nudis that we saw! Aren't they FABULOUS!

Last Weekend

This past Friday after work I took the ferry over to Tea Gardens (some dolphins decided to follow the ferry for half of the journey!). I stayed in Tea Gardens in Coralie & Brian's lovely home on Friday night and had a lovely meal with Kenneth & Jodie, Bev & Brian, and Coralie & Brian.

Taking the ferry over to Hawks Nest while the sun set

Early on Saturday morning we arose and drove down onto Hawks Nest beach - where we then drove along the beach (I will never get used to driving on beaches) over to Little Gibber, and then over to Jimmys Beach where I tried PADDLEBOARDING for the first time with Kenneth! And I didn't fall in (much to the disappointment of those watching from the beach).

Paddleboarding wasn't as tricky as I thought it might be - for some reason I was under the impression that the board would be really wobbly and difficult to stay on top of - but thankfully I was wrong. It was excellent weather (with highs of around 26ºC for the day - a WINTERS day) and we could see a couple of metres into the water very clearly - we saw many stingray and what was quite possibly a Port Jackson Shark. It it a very relaxing way to travel around the bay and definitely worth getting up very early for!

After a couple of hours paddleboarding we returned to the house for a lovely big breakfast which we ate outside - while we listened to all the birds. Then, in the afternoon, we headed off to Seal Rocks to where we explored a little and sat in the sun to eat our picnic lunch.

The stunning view from a lighthouse that we walked up

Afterwards, we headed into Newcastle to watch the sunset over the sea and have a couple of drinks and a bit of dinner. Then we went to Jodie & Kenneth's house boat for the night - just in time to see England lose the last test of the Ashes (which is fine because we already won). I really enjoyed my stay on the boat - it was very cosy and when I woke on Sunday morning to thunder and very heavy rain it was nice hearing the water on the roof of the boat - oddly calming.

We had outdoor plans for Sunday - but it rained cats & dogs for the majority of the day. So, instead, we had a lazy breakfast (where we tried Yorkshire puddings with scrambled eggs - actually quite a good combo!) and went back into Newcastle for morning tea and BANANA BREAD.

After eating much banana bread, and feeling SUPER FULL, we went off to the indoor climbing centre (that I had been introduced to last week by Greg) and had a good climbing session - it's amazing how quickly your muscles lose all power after not doing much climbing for a while! I think we have plans to go again this week too, so hopefully I'll improve a little and stop being so weak..

After climbing we went for a little lunch by the water (including oysters - I think they are growing on me now) and then went to play a little pool before driving back round to Nelson Bay to drop me back at Doug & Jenny's house.

I had a lovely jam-packed weekend with Jodie & Kenneth and I hope at some point they can come visit England so I can give them a little tour.

Last week I was also invited to lunch at Murray's Brewery with Greg & friends, and I had a really nice time - tried some 'Whale Ale' (not made with actual whales) and sat outside eating lunch (I got strange looks when I asked the waitress for some vinegar to go with my chips - apparently that's not really a thing here..)  and then played a game which I think was called petanque - very similar to lawn bowls, but instead of rolling the balls you throw them with backspin. Not really the kind of day we'd have in mid-winter at home..

At work I have been interpreting the results from my experiments - lots of statistics and trying to interpret the findings into logical explanations for what could be happening.

Only 2 weeks left here now! Time is really beginning to fly, the closer to the end it gets, and the busier I am. There's so much to do!

Plover babies!

Plover parents

There are lots of birds that live around the Fisheries Institute (it is surrounded by a protected area so there is lots of shelter for them).

And it now feels a lot like Spring here because the big Plovers have had LITTLE BABY PLOVERS!!

They are all running around the Fisheries site in small family groups - squeaking loudly when anyone goes near to them.

Tiny Plover

The parents are known for dive bombing people who come too close to the chicks - and so a few people here aren't too keen on them.

But they are SUPER CUTE, so I like them a lot. There are some birds of prey resident to the area though so I am quite worried that one day I will see less tiny Plovers running around.. but fingers crossed that doesn't happen.

Catching up

Its been a little while since I have posted anything on here - I somehow managed to get SUPER BUSY and neglected the blogging. But I will try to fill in the gap.

A couple of weeks ago I went on my first ever..


NIGHTDIVE!!

This was amazing. We geared up and headed out with our huge waterproof torches back to Fly Point at around 8pm (where I had dived here previously).

Banded Shrimp

Biscuit Star

I have no pictures of the night dive because (not too surprisingly) it was rather dark - and you have to have pretty fancy camera equipment that works with the contrast of the torch against the pitch black background. But I really wish I had some of that fancy camera equipment because we saw LOADS of cool things! Lots of big fish, benthic sharks, rays, eels, a huge lobster, some very sleepy and annoyed-looking giant blue groupers. And at night the anemones are a lot more active so I spent a lot of time (probably a bit too much time) watching a huge anemone feeding itself with it's awesome tentacles. We also saw a sponge SPAWNING! Which kind of looks like a tiny underwater volcano going off (except the cloud is actually a huge release of sponge eggs or sperm). That was very awesome - but also a little annoying because that's what we tried to get our Pipis to do in the lab right at the start of my time here, and they downright refused.. oh well - I suppose nature just does it's own thing when it wants.

Blind shark (not actually blind)

Pineapple Fish (see the little red dot
on his face)

Diving at night adds a scary, exciting element to the dive - because you literally can't see anything apart from what you are shining your torch at. So you shine around looking for beasties and suddenly the torchlight will reflect back a pair of eyes which might be super close to you! Or you'll be peering under a big ledge seeing if you can see what's hiding at the back and then you'll remember to check what's on your other side - and find a giant stingray a few metres away!

When we got back we made a note of all of the animals that we saw. Here are a few of them: Sea

This is a tiny Pygmy Leather Jacket

Pens, Biscuit stars, Pencil Urchins, Nudibranchs (including Serpent Pteraeolidia and Red Gilled Nembrotha!), Banded Shrimp (I got very excited when I saw these), Painted Rock Lobster, Blind Sharks (!!!), Wobbegong, Shovel-nose Ray (this one scared the bejesus out of me because I nearly landed on it), Stingray, Green Moray eels, Estuary catfish, Ludericks, Roughy, Pineapple fish (these guys have a red dot on their faces, and if you shine the torch on them for a bit - then cover the torches - the red dot glows in the dark!), Red rock cod, white seahorses (this one was so well camouflaged I have no idea how we found this in the dark), Tomato cod, Rock flathead, Coralfish, Red Morwong, Eastern Blue Grouper, Eastern Smooth Boxfish, Pygmy leather jacket, fan-belly leatherjacket, and a very large Green Sea Turtle (which was resting just under a ledge at the very start of the dive).

A Red Gilled Nembrotha - isn't it
super fabulous!

The pictures I have put on the sides here are just to show the animals so you can get an idea of what they look like (but they aren't my pictures as I don't (yet) have a super uber fancy camera).

Shovel-nose Ray (these can use their
noses to flip over big rocks to find
food!)

Another really really AWESOME thing about the night dive - BIOLUMINESCENCE!!!! Near the surface, if we covered our torches and just waved our arms around in the water, we could see little sparkling things in the water - like glitter. Bioluminescent plankton! It was a very good dive - I may have to go on more night dive adventures in the future.


My Experiment

Over the past week(ish) I have been coordinating my longer experiment looking at the effect of harmful algae on oyster larvae growth - and it has been going (mostly) to plan. Every second day I would measure hundreds of larvae to see how much growth had taken place, and also checked to see if they had full tummys (you can tell because they are almost completely transparent).

The consistent problematic thing with running experiments involving living creatures is that you have to keep them alive. So I had to feed them daily - pipetting 0.3ml of food algae mix into each of my tiny tubes of larvae (I had hundreds of tiny tubes of larvae), and I did water changes every other day (this was the part that took quite a while to do - and it was also the reason I was in work at from 7am - 1pm a couple of Sundays ago). But it's all worth it, because it looks like we are getting some interesting results! Hopefully I'll run them through some stats tests over the next few days and find some significant differences. Fingers crossed!


The Hunter Valley

I also tried some port FOR FREE

We saw that the weather was looking up and we decided on a trip up to the Hunter Valley (which is pretty famous for being a place that makes nice vino).  We journeyed up there (really lovely scenery) and went into a few different places to learn about (and also maybe taste) some wine. Lots of the wine tasting was FREE - and I asked the poor wine gurus many questions about grapes and soil and what makes the nicest wine so nice. There were lots of tourists there as the day progressed (dam tourists being all touristy and going to taste wine..), and also a rather large hen party that looked pretty intent on trying most of the wines in the vicinity.

Irukandji Shark & Ray Encounters

I also met this girl - she
is a very pretty
Gang-gang Cockatoo

Last time I went to visit Brian and Bev on the other side of the Bay we had lunch with some of their friends - and last Monday I was invited to dinner with some of these friends (Jodie & Kenneth), at the Shark & Ray centre in Nelson Bay with the managing directer and marketing manager of the centre - Ryan and Lia. 

We had a very lovely meal, and then I was treated to a private tour of the Shark & Ray Centre! I was shown all of the animals and we got into the tank in our waders and fed some of the sharks and rays! I was really impressed by the centre and how the focus is really strongly on conservation and on teaching the public about how to correctly treat wild animals.

Kangaroos getting a bit cheeky - this one was watching
one of the demos and standing in the crowd with us (it
was also stealing apples from peoples' bags)

Visiting Newcastle for the weekend

This past weekend I stayed with Peta, Patrick, Charlie, Penny, and Lucy in Newcastle (Australia - I know it's confusing because they have copied all the place names at home..). Had a fab weekend being shown some of the city - walked on the Anzac walk, watched the cricket (everyone here is pretending not to care about the ashes - so I keep reminding them), went to the local market, and we went to a big reptile park where we saw many animals (not all of them reptiles), and got to pet a Kangaroo! Peta and Patrick also very kindly organised a full english breakfast which was AMAZING. I really enjoyed my stay in Newcastle and I'd like to explore it better at some point - it looks like a really interesting city - lots to do, beautiful coastline, and also some very large impressive industrial machinery to have a look at.

Wombat!

A strange hedgehog (echidna)

This is part of the Anzac walk - amazing views out to sea and over Newcastle. Also there were some guys paragliding
around - this is something I now really want to do. It's been added to the wishlist.