Coral Reef Ecology

Last week’s PADI course finished on Wednesday, with Thursday being ‘de-gas day’ where everyone gets their day off. Wednesday night the staff moved the dining tables outside where we all ate dinner, which had a great atmosphere. After dinner we went to sit on one of the beach cabanas, chatted, and drank Bintang (beer brewed in Wakatobi - v. nice). After a while we heard of a gathering occurring further down the beach so we walked until we discovered a small bonfire next to a local tent-bar selling anguur, which is traditional Indonesian wine (don’t worry M&D this isn’t the illegal stuff - that’s arak). We sat, talked, drank, and looked at the stars through the clearest sky I’ve ever seen until the tide came in, forcing us back to base camp where I then went to bed. It was a lovely evening. De-gas day came and brought with it scorching temperatures. We went exploring, and then to a picturesque little beach to sunbathe called Bounty Bay. I applied suncream liberally but my shoulders and neck still got a little burnt. After lunch I bought a hammock and set it up on our porch - it was so comfy I fell asleep whilst reading.

On Friday we had two orientation dives for our upcoming CRE (Coral Reef Ecology) course. We have to pass the course with an average of over 80% to get permission to survey the reef for our dissertations so it’s reasonably important. We started the course on Saturday, with two lectures (algae and invertebrates) and two dives.

Today we had two more lectures (coral reef introduction and coral reef morphology), a dive and a snorkel. When snorkelling, you see a substantially larger amount of species than when diving because of the ease of communication. When diving at 18m if you see something of interest you have to first get your partner’s attention, then make an effectively communicative hand signal so they understand what you’re about to show them, then you have to point to the species in question, which is somewhat harder than it sounds due to the huge amount of other species in the area of interest. When snorkelling however, you can describe exactly where and what you’re looking at, making species spotting a lot easier. Whilst I was snorkelling in the shallows a banded sea krait (extremely poisonous bite = death) swam about half a foot away from me, popped up to the surface for air, then swam back down to the deep. My heart rate increased substantially after this!

It’s 9.30pm, I have just come out of my first CRE exam on algae and invertebrates and I passed with 93% so I treated myself to a pack of Oreos and I am now off to bed. Hope everyone back home is OK. Apologies if I’m slow replying to emails - time is fairly tight here so I only get brief snatches online! Will update in a couple of days.

PS: Hope France was good Mum and Dad!