The grand finale, part 3: Heron Island

Yes, this is wayyy overdue. Between the last post and now, I went away on two little weekend trips (to the Whitsundays and then the Gold Coast Color Run, details and pictures will come eventually), classes ended, and since then I have been basically holed up to catch up on all the studying I didn't do during the semester. Thank god for SWOTVAC  or I might seriously have trouble passing all my classes. Now I'm generally pretty good with avoiding procrastination but this is probably the closest I'd ever come to cramming. I can finally breathe a half sign of relief (before going back to tackle my last two exams next week) after getting through two back to back exams today.

Anyways back to Heron. Way back on April 6th, after returning from Fraser Island at around 4:30pm, I boarded another bus at 11:30pm that same day for an overnight 11 hour drive north to Gladstone (a good portion of the route which we had just driven back from), where we took a 2 hour extremely choppy ferry ride to the Great Barrier Reef! Heron Island is a tiny coral cay (you can walk around the entire island in 25min) at pretty much the most southern tip of the GBR, and as one of my lecturers said, the best place in the world. I have never come face to face with much marine (or any for that matter) wildlife in my life, and am so grateful to have gone there as it is a place unknown to most visitors to Australia.

This was my first encounter with the World Heritage Listed Great Barrier Reef and needless to say, I was blown away. Over the next five (really four) days, I went snorkelling 10 times. It became a routine to hop out of bed at 5am everyday to jump in the water and every snorkle is filled with turtles, stingrays, sharks, a multitude of beautiful fish and of course the grand creator of it all, the coral reefs. The busyness and intricacy of the reef communities is absolutely fascinating and with each snorkel, I felt more and more at one with everything in the ocean. In between swims during low tide, we also went on many walks to check out the organisms on the reef flat, search for turtles nesting, and simply hang out at the pier watching the turtles and sharks frolick.  

We did have to do a research project somewhere in between as well and my group looked at the distribution of different types of algae on the reef flat. Not quite as interesting as another group who could use snorkeling as an excuse to examine the feeding patterns of butterfly fish, but it was relatively easy and we got it done quickly which allowed more time for exploration.
     
Here are some underwater pictures taken by others. Even these great pictures don't do it justice.

 

 

To culminate this amazing experience, on the last night, we did a Harlem shake, at the suggestion of the lecturer.