Monday 7 October 2024 – I was wondering how I would do when I faced the challenge of not making a total arse of myself on a snorkelling expedition yesterday, Sunday 6th, which was our last full day on Lizard Island. We were due to go out at 2pm on an expedition to see turtles and giant clams, so I started worrying thinking about how to prepare at, oh, I dunno, about 7am. Although I had vowed never to snorkel again, for some reason I had brought a waterproof camera with me, the rather capable Olympus Tough TG-5 that I had bought for our first major trip six years ago, when we went to South America, and it came in rather handy then. This, however, was its first serious outing since, and so I wondered whether 6 year old tech would still cut the mustard for creating photos for this blog. We’d also bought a waterproof case for Jane’s phone camera, which had not worked on its previous outing and we hoped it might be a backup in case my efforts came to naught.

There were only five punters for the outing: our American friends Susan and Michael (experienced divers both); Jane and me (experienced snorkellers one of us); and a lady called Louise who was perfectly pleasant but a bit of a chaos catalyst – she was a lady of last-minute decisions, such as would she snorkel or simply observe, and would she therefore fill out the disclaimer even if she was only going to observe, and would she provide credit card info to cover the cost and so forth.

So it was, at quite a few minutes past 2pm, we found Nemo

and set out across to Watson’s Bay, past a nice view of the resort’s main lodge.

Captain Tom briefed us on all the usual things,

like what to do if the boat caught fire, or sank, and Olla, our guide for the dive (sorry, no photo, but she’s a lot prettier than Tom) briefed us on what to do if we sank or otherwise had problems and, importantly, how to get out of the water once we’d finished.

Watson’s Bay revealed no turtles, so Tom steered us a little way out to what the resort calls the clam garden, where we could attempt to see the other half of the brief. Once there, Olla jumped in, Susan and Michael followed her example, as did Jane, and I did my best to slide gently off the boat so as not to get too much of the ocean deep into my sinuses, which I judged would have been a poor start to the activity.

My main reservation about snorkelling has been the dichotomy between being able to see (and photograph) what’s beneath me whilst still keeping up with a group; I can do one or the other, but not both. If I concentrate on looking below the water, I easily become disoriented and lose sight of the group, and then it takes me time to spot them and swim over, by which time, beneath their snorkelling masks, they’re rolling their eyes at my flailing around.  Thus you can imagine that I was a bit worried about keeping up, but Olla was towing a nice visible buoyancy ring, and I found this really helpful. I could see the group, the currents and the waves were small and so I could actually relax and spend a few of my limited mental MIPs on watching the reef below .

Which was fabulous.

For once, I was relaxed enough to be able to work out what the camera was doing and so, among the many dozens of photos I took, there are some good ones.

There are several more, which you can view at a Flickr Album I have created.

A photographic note here, since this is a photo blog as well as a travel blog.  If technical photo stuff bores you then (a) you are dead to me and (b) you may skip this bit (the next three images).

Here’s a comparison of what a photo from the Oympus looked like out of the camera, and what a bit of processing can do.

One of the things that I like about the camera is that it can capture images in RAW (sort of a digital negative format), which means two things: firstly, that every image needs some form of processing in order to be viewable; and secondly that a lot more detail can be got out of the image.  I can use my favourite processing software to gussy up the image that the camera has created from its own RAW data,

and you can see an improvement; but if I make exactly the same corrections to the RAW version, you get this:

better colours, more detail, less noise. To any people considering being serious about their photography, I present this as being why you should always make sure you have a camera which can do RAW.

OK, the rest of you can start reading again from here.

The giant clams were amazing – the colours (vivid electric greens, blues and purples) didn’t really look natural! As well as the many giants, there were much smaller clams, around 10-15cms long, embedded in the other corals (a few examples can be seen in the parrot fish picture above) which were equally brightly coloured although they tended to close up as one swam over them. To my untutored eye the coral looked to be in pretty good shape too, offering a multitude of shapes and colours. All in all the whole thing was a lot less stressful and much more rewarding than I had expected it to be.

That was pretty much it for the day, apart from one little item of wildlife that Jane spotted on our balcony before we turned in for the night;

a gecko, which had picked, as its ideal resting spot for the night, the space under my drying swimming trunks.

So: today, then: the day we left Lizard Island. There was something of a timing issue at stake: a visit to the Research Station was possible this morning, but then again our flight back to Cairns also left this morning. The resort staff did a great job of ensuring that we did both, again an example of the great service that accompanies the great food there.

We had a swift breakfast, keeping a stern eye on the seagulls which were positioning themselves for a guerilla raid on our breakfast bacon if we let our attention drift,

and then we (actually the exact same people who had gone out on the boat yesterday) set out in a couple of robust trucks on the track

to the Research Station

to be welcomed by Dr Lyle Vail,

one of the co-directors of the station, an extremely knowledgeable, eloquent and engaging man. He spent some 90 minutes filling our brains to overflowing with information about the station’s 51-year history, its three missions and the area it covers.

Lizard Island was once part of the mainland, back in the Good Old Days, when the sea level was 120 metres below today’s.  This, incidentally means that the outer edge of the Great Barrier Reef was a 120-metre high cliff, since deep ocean starts there. That’s 400 feet in old money – it must have been an extraordinary sight to see the waterfalls pouring over the edge. But inland of that edge, some 20,000 years ago, it was dry land, which is how come the island has a significant aboriginal history. Sea levels rose and Lizard Island was cut off about 6,000 years ago. Lyle described (in simple terms such that we mere mortals could understand) some of the scientific research that gives the evidence for that history.

He showed us an example of the research lab space they provide

which doesn’t look like much, but then the researchers bring much of their own gear when they can.  He also showed us an example of gear the station can provide

in the form of sophisticated microscopes, which are a bit tricky for researchers and students to bring for themselves. The centre also provides accommodation for up to 37 visiting scientists and students and boats for them to do their expeditions to the reef for research.

The station was in a quiet time, research-wise, so Lyle wasn’t able to show us much activity in the aquarium section of the station; but there was some work going on concerning the crown of thorns starfish, or COTS.

which (a) has to be handled very carefully on account of the spines being able to inject a very nasty venom

and (b) is causing great concern because of its ability to inflict terminal damage to coral reefs by extruding its stomach (at the centre underneath it) over sections of coral

and digesting the coral polyps. They graze back and forth, basically killing areas of reef.  Again, in the Good Old Days before humans started dicking about with the world’s climate systems, this was not a problem; but the warmer waters that arise from climate change make it easier for the COTS to multiply, in turn threatening the reef. The female can produce millions of eggs; the survival rates of the subsequent larvae are boosted by warmer water temperatures (and higher nutrient levels due to agricultural runoff).

Lyle also talked us through bleaching (another probable consequence of climate change)

and showed us a tank where a controlled temperature is being maintained

in order to make specific observations. The tank, by the way, contained quite a sizeable clam.

It would have been fascinating to spend several more hours there listening to Lyle and appreciating his knowledge, passion and ability to explain stuff. But we had to leave, a departure made slightly more tense by Louise’s indecisiveness a out buying a Research Station T-shirt.  For our part, we made a small contribution to the station in the form of a nice new hat for Jane, swiftly chosen

and then had to take our leave for the airport to start our journey home.

So: is that it? Is That All There Is?

Not quite. We started our journey home as soon as the good old Cessna took off, but getting back to cold, wet, thundery Blighty was a two-day exercise, and I’ll write about that in the next post, which will be the closing entry for this trip.