Leaving :(

I can't believe I've been here nearly 3 months and it's time to leave already! I have had an incredible time here in Nelson Bay. From my work placement I have gained lab & fieldwork experience in a government facility - invaluable experience that should hopefully help me with my future career. I have made some friends, worked with accomplished scientists, learnt to use some different equipment and scientific techniques, been able to discuss different career paths with people actually on those career paths, talk to PhD students about what their programmes have been like and the logistics behind doing a PhD, and been able to conduct my very own experiment (which may result in me being a coauthor of a scientific paper!).

Some of the things I have done at the Port Stephens Fisheries Institute:

• Assisted other researchers with projects
• Sampled oysters from aboard a small research vessel
• Lab work including microscope work and proper use of some harmful chemicals
• Learning husbandry techniques for keeping Oysters
• Learnt to strip spawn pipis, pacific oysters, and sydney rock oysters
• Learnt about dealing with harmful algae in the lab
• Learnt algae cultivation and counting techniques
• Collected organisms for experimentation
• Designed and conducted a number of experiments
• Learnt all about how an oyster hatchery works and the larval stages of oysters
• Learnt to use an Oxymeter to measure very tiny changes in the oxygen concentration of a small volume of water - to measure oxygen consumption of very little organisms
• Attempted to make sense of the results of the experiments using graphs and stats

On my last day of work we had a morning tea & cake session with everyone and there was SO MUCH CAKE. It was great to collect everyone in the same place and thank them for everything they've done for me here. Then, after work, a few of us went 10-pin bowling..

Outside of work I have also tried to make the most of exploring a new place - and I think I managed to squeeze a fair bit in! A lot of this was thanks to the generosity and kindness of people I have met whilst out here, I hope to be able to maybe show some of these people around my neck of the woods at some point in the future.

I have:

Bowling with the oyster team
- believe it or not, I actually wasn't that bad at
bowling without the gutter guards up

• Stayed with Peta, Patrick, Charlie, and Penny - where we visited a lovely market, walked along the stunning coastline and on the Anzac Walk, had a big english breakfast, watched the cricket, and went to the Reptile Park and touched a Kangaroo!

• Stayed with Kenneth & Jodie on their houseboat - went paddleboarding and climbing, tried Yorkshire puddings for breakfast, visited more of the beautiful beaches around here, had THE BEST BANANA BREAD in Newcastle, and ate a lovely meal whilst looking out over Newcastle and the sea
• Played a lot of pool with many different people
• Had 2 very lovely dinners with Kenneth, Jodie, Coralie, Brian, Brian & Bev - I'm very sad we didn't manage to have a games evening - but maybe I can participate via skype?
• Visited a local brewery with Greg, Michelle, and their friends, for a lovely large lunch (when I was looked at strangely for asking for vinegar, and I won one game of petanque - which may have been a fluke)
• Discovered that I have an unfounded fear of pelicans
• Been diving a lot - the diving here is insane. I have seen so much sealife, and SO MANY NUDIBRANCHS. My favourite dives have to be the night dive - that was really incredible, shining torches under ledges in the pitch black and seeing huge fish, eels, turtles, and rays staring back at me - and also the boat dive, because SHARKS. By the end of this trip I will have my Padi Advanced Diver qualification which is very exciting!
• Gone whale spotting from the rocks, and visited the Gan Gan lookout with Jenny & Doug - the views here really are very impressive!
• Watched lots of Antiques Roadshow with Jenny & Doug in an effort to make me a little less homesick
• Met a man having his afternoon whisky on the beach with his turtle
• Been given a tour of Geoff Diemer's oyster farm - learnt all about how it works and tried some nude oysters straight from the water! Geoff also donated us lots of oysters to eat at home - which we did, immediately, with g&ts made with limes fresh from the tree in the back garden!
• Eaten SO MANY OYSTERS - having never eaten an oyster before coming here, the amount I have now eaten is, I think, quite impressive. I have tried them cooked with bacon and Worcester sauce, cooked with ginger and chilli, warm with lemon and salt, and raw with nothing on them! I have warmed to them a lot - but I think my favourite is warm with lemon and salt straight from the barbecue - I might be developing an expensive taste that I won't be able to maintain..

Lovely flowers and chocolates from work on my last day

• Been snorkelling with Kyle whilst he free-dived for lobsters - I was then donated the lobsters (which was very generous of Kyle), and I learnt to cook them on the barbecue with lots of garlic butter - this was DELICIOUS
• Attended lots of weekly Rotary meetings, met many lovely Rotarians and learnt about what they all do
• Attended a Rotary District Changeover - I was very honoured to be invited and it was great to see people being appreciated for all the amazing work they do
• Helped out at a charity fundraiser film event (a really interesting film too) run by Kathy in the local cinema
• Been Pipi collecting with Brandt & Kyle which sounded very scientific when I agreed to go (when I didn't even know what Pipis were), but was actually very fun and silly. We drove down Stockton beach and paddled and wiggled around in the sand to find these little bivalves.
• Been climbing many times with Greg - started off very weak, but by the end I began to get some of my strength back - now I've just got to keep up the good work when I return home!
• Took a trip with Doug & Jenny to the Hunter Valley where we tasted lots of lovely wine, cheese, and chutney - and I fell asleep on the way home (to be fair to me, it was very warm)
• Visited the Irukandji Shark & Ray Encounters Centre, where I had a really super meal with Kenneth, Jodie, Ryan, and Lia. And then later I got to feed lots of rather large rays and learn about everything they are doing at the centre. I also got to meet a very pretty Gang-gang Cockatoo who sat on my arm very nicely for a while until she decided she actually hated me.
• Went Kayaking with Doug in the bay - very relaxing and an excellent way to see the bay (even though the current did beat us when we tried to cross the bay

Brian & Bev travelled round to the other side of the bay
to watch my presentation

• Took the ferry from Nelson Bay to Hawks Nest, stayed with Brian & Bev for the weekend. Given a tour of the local area on that side of the bay, and a driving tour of the industrial side of Newcastle, and introduced to the birdlife of the area (who all seem to congregate on Brian & Bev's balcony in the morning)
• Had many lovely lunches with work people (Kyle, Brandt, Laura, and Wally)
• Climbed Mount Tomaree (Not really a mountain - but a fairly decent hill for sure)

I am extremely grateful to everyone who made this opportunity possible and who made me feel so welcome and showed me around during my stay. I have really enjoyed my stay here in Nelson Bay - and as well as developing my professional qualifications & experience I have also been able to experience life abroad and had so many great experiences and make some new friends. I am so thankful to lots of people for helping me to get the most out of this amazing opportunity:

Thank you..

• All the Rotary Clubs and individuals involved my making my placement happen (Nelson Bay, Didcot, Myall Coast, Colin Yarwood) - the whole experience has been amazing and enormously beneficial
• Especially the Nelson Bay Rotary Club for inviting me to attend all their weekly meetings during my stay and for being so welcoming



Doug, Jenny and I looking very smart at my
final Rotary meeting at Nelson Bay

• Brian & Bev - for letting me stay with you for a few weekends, showing me round, and kindly picking me up (and taking me back to) the airport - I know you say it's a short drive.. it's not.

• Peta, Patrick, Charlie & Penny - for inviting me to stay with your family for the weekend
• Kenneth & Jodie - for letting me stay on your boat and organising a lovely jam packed weekend
• Brian & Coralie - for letting me stay in your lovely house, and for the best after-paddleboarding breakfast 
• Geoff Diemer - for giving me a tour of the Oyster Farm - and for letting me try so many oysters!
• The Port Stephens Fisheries Institute - for offering me the opportunity to do this placement
• Everyone at work who was very welcoming, and happy to help me get involved and to teach me things - including Mike, Wayne, Steve, Kyle, Brandt, Laura, Wally, and Greg.
• Everyone who offered to give me lifts around the place and to and from work (Doug, Jenny, Wally, Greg, Justin)
• Feet First Dive Centre - for dealing with my annoying changing schedule and helping me with my dive course, and for putting up with early morning Charlie (not the most chipper person)
• A huge thank you to Doug & Jenny - for hosting me and making this whole thing possible. Its a big thing to invite a stranger into your home for 3 months, and I am so grateful to you for looking after me, feeding me, and showing me around during my stay
• All the friends I made whilst being here - I hope at some point you might be able to visit my neck of the woods and I can show you around! 

THE OYSTER TEAM! (Clockwise from me: Brandt, John, Kyle, and Laura in the middle)

My Australian family - Jenny, Doug, Peta, Patrick, Charlie, and Penny (excuse the poor quality & light of this photo - we
realised quite late on that we didn't have a group photo and so this was taken outside very late in the evening after a fantastic barbecue at the house)

A massive thank you to everyone!

I'm very sad to be leaving - but I am pleased to say that I have a plane journey home without a 9 hour wait layover! And I am excited to get back, see my friends, and get ready to go back to Uni!

One last dive (or 3)

Yesterday morning I managed to squeeze in one last dive trip on the boat over to Broughton Island where we did 3 boat dives. The swell was fairly intense but it was definitely worth the effort, and I'm so glad I finally got to go. The water was a toasty 19ºC and the visibility was pretty good too (and the swell actually meant that I kept nice and warm from the effort it was taking to stay in one place!).






During the dive we saw lots of Port Jackson sharks, big blue groupers, grey nurse sharks, huge shoals of little bullseye, and a few other things (including some nice colourful starfish).

Here are some of the (very many) photos that I took. I borrowed someone's fabulous underwater camera because mine is currently throwing a bit of a wobbly and needs time out. This post is basically just pictures - it doesn't really need much else to be honest.

These are the Bullseye fish - HUGE SHOALS that blocked out the light when they swam overhead

We stopped for a quick cup of tea and some soup and biscuits in between dives - not a bad view from the boat

Then we found some Grey Nurse Sharks

A few of them! They like to swim through the big shoals of bullseye fish. Most of the sharks we saw were cruising
around, but some of them were resting in the channel because the current means they can stay stationary and
still have water running past their gills

Posing for the camera

And I am now a certified ADVANCED OPEN WATER DIVER!!

Experiment Outcome

So my experiment has finished & we have had a look at the results. Deciphering the stats results could take a little time - but we can deduce some things from the initial graphs of the results.

These graphs show percentage status; blue = healthy & eating; green = alive & not eating; yellow = dead. In each mini
graph the concentrations of harmful algae are progressively higher from left to right

The oyster larvae exposed to the harmful algae seemed to stop eating - and the higher the concentration they were exposed to, the longer they stopped eating (with the most severe exposures still not eating after 6 days!). Now we assume they have some reserves from the egg - so don't need to eat immediately. Perhaps they can detect that something bad is in the water and so they clam up (so to speak) to prevent themselves from being negatively affected?

I also looked at oyster larvae length - and found that the larvae exposed to more harmful algae didn't grow as much as the controls that weren't exposed (which makes sense because they weren't eating). However the unfed control larvae (second from the left) still ended up larger than the larvae exposed to the highest concentrations of harmful algae (on the right). This could indicate that they are having to use energy in some way - perhaps to repair damage being caused to them by the algae.. But more experiments need to be done to confirm this. We are sending some of the algae and algae water off to analyse the components and toxins present in order to help to answer some of these questions.

This graph shows the growth rate of the larvae exposed to 1000cells/ml of the harmful algae (left), and the growth rate of the larvae exposed to the water from 1000cells/ml (but no actual algae cells - just whatever they gave off into the water). And it is really interesting because it shows no difference between these 2 treatments - suggesting that whatever is affecting the oyster larvae is in what is being emitted by the harmful algae (not the algal cells themselves). This could mean that water used in oyster hatcheries needs to be tested and treated differently, as at the moment it is just run through a very tiny filter - but this won't get rid of any water soluble toxins that could be in the water. But again, more work needs to be done before any real conclusions can be reached.

Exciting stuff - and the Fisheries Institute is going to keep me up to date with any further findings on the subject, including the toxin test results, which should be very interesting to see.

I've been spending the last couple of days sorting out all of the data I collected so that it can be understood by a person who isn't me, and preparing things for my return home - I can't believe it's been 3 months since I first arrived here!

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!