A Baby Story

Not your typical baby story, this is one of ten baby cobia, who are being raised as part of an aquaculture class at JCU.  They will be cared for and monitored carefully over six weeks during which time wate quality must be tested daily and the cobia must be fed four times daily. 
     Cobia are a typical aquaculture species, raised for their high-quality meat, the fate of these guys is as yet unknown to me, but I would like to think they will have a happier ending.  But for now I'm focusing on raising them to be big and healthy and ignoring what may lie ahead for them, because as they say, ignorance is bliss.

Tut-tut, It Looks Like Rain

"Christopher Robin! I think it would help with this deception if you would just kind of open your umbrella and say, 'Tut-tut, it looks like rain.'" said Winnie the Pooh.
And so Christopher Robin said, "Tut-tut, it looks like rain. Tut-tut, it looks like rain."

The path, yes there is a path there, to the marine sciences buildings.

The wet season is here!  It has been constantly raining for the past few days, the creeks have overflown and turned into raging rivers.  The grounds have become completely saturated and are speckled with puddles much deeper than they seem.  By the time we get to class we are drenched, no longer from sweat, but from the rain because no matter how prepared we are it seems we still get quite wet on the long walks to class and home.  It has at the very least, been encouraging to stay inside and do the work that has been lurking in the shadows during sunny days.  And at most it is a warm rain, perfect for playing in.  Cricket in the rain is a bit difficult to play but running through the crater-sized puddles makes it that much more fun and skimboarding is a great way to spend an hour breaking from studying.  And with at least two more weeks of this ahead, one must at least be grateful that we don't have to worry about a drought!

Skimboarding in the evening rain.

Adventure

An adventure is defined as an exciting or unusual experience; it may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome.

Decisions and Premonitions

It's not the best feeling, realizing you have no money when you're living on the other side of the world, especially with 3 months left and only $50.00 to your name.  In moments following these instances, many things become clear, priorities get rearranged and decisions must be made.  I have two completely empty bank accounts back home, an empty paypal account and an almost empty wallet.  I have three months before heading back home and, undoubtedly, starting a new job or going back to a part-time summer job and by the time that is over, I will be heading back to school taking on no less than two jobs alongside my studies.  In the past I have struggled to make my rent payments, lived for months at a time on pasta and basically resorted to being a shut-in to prevent myself from spending money.  But I'm in Australia now, and I don't care.  I'm going to the Whitsunday Islands, to Perth, to Brisbane, to a music festival, going diving, joining the gym and having fun, because no matter what, I will have bills waiting for me when I get home, and work, and class and my senior project.  So for now I'm going to enjoy the magic of Oz.

Paradise in Peril

Or What Happens When The 'Tragedy of the Commons' Hits the Sea

 Sunday was a real eye-opening experience for me.  I had been hearing about the Tragedy of the Commons for years, since high school at least, and I had learned in many college classes at my home uni about the terrible conditions of the world's fisheries.  But until Sunday I had never seen any evidence of it first-hand.  This is not to say that I didn't believe it, the numbers and figures I had learned about left little room for doubt.  But something can definitely be said for seeing something for oneself.  And that is just what happened on Sunday.  For the Fisheries Science class I am taking in Australia we went out on the school's research vessel and went trawling for prawn (shrimp).  To catch prawn, midwater trawling is performed which is a type of fishing that uses cylindrical nets that are pulled along on either side of the boat to catch the prawn that are in the water column.  Unfortunately this also leads to the catch of many other organisms in the water column including, but not limited to, sea turtles, sharks, squid, rays and sea snakes.  Nets are now required by law to have devices to reduce by-catch, but as we saw on Sunday, they don't do the job 100%.  In the four trawls that we did, we never saw more than 5 prawn at once, but did each time get buckets full of fish.  We also got a shark, a few sea snakes and a few squid.  And so I now understand how the seemingly unlimited supply of prawns must have enticed many a fisherman to go reap the bounty of the sea but has now left the prawn industry flailing in the water while wiping out numerous species of sea creatures.

Hailing a bus from the wrong side of the road



Aussie cookies AKA biscuits

Me with a wallaby at the Wildlife Park

Despite the many similarities between Oz and the U.S. and despite the fact that I spend most of my time just feeling like I might be in a very far away part of the U.S., there are some wonderful moments when I know I truly am on the other side of the world.  Some of those times have been when I forget how the time change works and call home to wake my parents up at 5 a.m. or when I tried to buy contact solution and could only find it at the chemist (pharmacist).  But then there are instances such as when I walked into a meeting with a researcher to find a baby wallaby nestled in a sling hanging off the back of a chair.  The joey had been orphaned with a broken leg and the researcher, along with his partner, were nursing her back to health before she could be released back into the wild, much as we do with birds and deer and rabbits and such in the States.  Of course there are also many times when I am reminded how much of a tourist I still am, despite being a student and trying to blend in.  These times have come when I try to pay with two 50 cent pieces, thinking they are 25 cents like our quarters, or when I try to hail a bus from the wrong side of the road and wonder why they don't stop.  And then there are those moments when I just have no idea what someone is saying to me because of the different slang they use here.  These things are all combining to make this experience so much more than it would be otherwise, I would not trade one misunderstanding or unexpected incident for the world and I can't wait to see what the next few months have in store for me.

Unexpectedly Experiential Education

Having only completed two weeks of class I have had the pleasant surprise of learning how hands-on the classes at JCU are.  Despite the some 20,000 students the university plays host to, they somehow manage to give the classes, or at least the upper level classes, an element of experiential learning.  I have so far been on a field trip to a prawn farm where we gathered samples from the ponds to test water quality as well as done a lab in which we got to age fish by counting the annuli in their otoliths, something I have very much been keen to do since starting on my path to be a fish biologist.  Additionally, tomorrow I will be going on another field trip, this time out in Cleveland Bay, to look at the effectiveness of bycatch reduction devices used in prawn fisheries.