Just back from Straddie trip on monday... reason i'm typing this now is b'cos the intensive 4 day field trip was so full-on, i slept only 3 hours on final night working on our group presentation. Not an easy feat given that we've one evening to choose and formulate our specific project, 2 days to collect and computer-crunch data, as well as brief presentation on our progress each evening, before culminating on the final presentation on the last morning! But it was great fun! Then got home at 3pm and slept for 15 hours straight until next morning. Were looking at light relations and growth of Rhizophora stylosa mangrove trees and graphing its growth history using leaf node scars, and investigating any within and between site differences. Another good thing was the food.... so much better than what i'm used to have, and absolutely gorged since we already paid for the catering..... meat pies and nachos..... YUM!!!
Got a shock of my life during the first day also... we were introduced to different environments around Stradbroke Island and looked at the mangroves, benthic microalgae on sandflats, corals (or what's left) and seagrasses. The last two required snorkelling, me and afew of us from Singapore didn't have any, but we decided to jump into the water and have fun anyway. At 300m offshore from the seagrass patch, everyone else was powering away quickly with their flippers, while me and a friend was just swimming at snail's pace ("turtle's pace" is inappropriate in this context), and when i looked back, saw my friend's head bobbing in and out of the water and struggling. I decided things were not good and tried to get him back to the boat 30 metres away when he said he's returning (while head halfway in the water), and was having trouble even keeping afloat. Having realise he couldn't float normally (when i told him so), i put my arm over his chest and tried to hold his head up above the water, while i paddled slowly back to the boat. Manage to get our lecturer's attention on the boat and had the boat come over and pull my friend out of the water.
He had a cramp at his feet. But otherwise he recovered quite quickly after getting on board. Me? He didn't realise i was shocked the hell out of my life, with water depth much more than 2 metres deep (he's shorter than me), at least 200m away from shore and clad in only shorts and booties... and i myself was drinking seawater trying to keep him above the water surface... wanted to swim back after the episode to look at the seagrass but was too tired and swam slowly. Norm's (the lecturer) flippers and mask didn't work for me.
Now i know why we had to fill up that snorkelling experience form before setting out (which i obviously absolutely invented... think i wrote my last experience was at 1992... hahaha). Didn't want to tell them i didn't even have a legitimate swimming proficiency bronze certificate, let alone a life-saving one.
Oops... my friend just popped by and i think caught a glimpse of what i was typing. Gotta bat out of the library now.
