Moreton Bay Research Station

This past weekend I went on a field trip for my Australia's Marine Environment class, to North Stradbroke Island which is off the coast of Queensland. It is a pretty small island, and it was a lot of fun. We had to get on a bus at 7 30 Friday morning, and we got to the island around 10. The rest of the day we spent eating/walking around the rocky shore and sandy habitats, learning about all the organisms that live there. It was so cool! We saw a blue striped octopus, which can kill you, and it was sweet. We saw lots of other cool stuff - spoon worms, sea sponges, sea cucumbers...among lots of other stuff. My favorite was probably the soldier crabs - they come out around dusk and run around together on top of the sand and when you go near them they burrow really quickly. I tried to get some pics/videos but we'll see how they came out...it was really hard to get. Oh, also the first thing we did when we got there was a seine netting, which is this huge net that some of the students took out to bring back the fish by the shore. Our prof pointed out all the fish that came in - and we got to see a few sting rays that got caught in the net. They were awesome. Towards the end of the day our tutor (groups of 10 were assigned to one tutor), asked us what we wanted to do an experiment on, and Brynne says that it would be cool to look at why hermit crabs clump together, and I was thinking the EXACT same thing for like 20 minutes. It was unreal. I am still in shock. Anyway, so that was what we did our experiment on, so on Saturday morning we had to go get crabs and we observed how they clumped...then we had a lot of the day to chill because we finished quickly and we had to give powerpoint presentations after dinner. Side note: they fed us like every 2-3 hours, which was sweet, and the food was pretty good. And the rooms were pretty nice - just bunks like a hostel but the bedding was pretty good and it was just cozy, kind of hard to describe. So anyway, the presentations took a while, then after I was just going to go to bed but then I decided to go out to the bar down the street, which normally closes at 10 pm but the people at the station asked them to keep it open because we were there. It was ridiculous...there was a high chair in the corner and I saw like a 5 year old kid. There was a local band playing and it was all these old dudes...and all these middle aged women were dancing ridiculously on the dance floor. I was majorly entertained. I don't think I went to sleep until 3 though and had to wake up at 6 30 because breakfast was at 7...but it turned out not to be too bad. After bfast we had to clean our rooms, then we left at 9 to go to Point Lookout and Cylinder Beach. Basically we walked along the beach/rocky shore for most of the morning/afternoon, and it was absolutely gorgeous. We stopped at a gelato place half way through, and it was amazing. I got fig flavored - best idea ever. So we had time to swim and stuff (which I did not because they didn't tell us to bring a swim suit...bitches) then we came back at 2, and got home about 5 30. So it's been a long day but I'm actually pretty awake...I was going to go out tonight but I'm going to save my energy for St. Patty's day! Anywho, it was a great weekend and expect to see pics on facebook soon. I didn't take too many, but I brought Brynne's camera on the walk today so I'll steal her pics and probably put some on the blog.