Saturday we went to Watson's Bay again in the morning, and looked for more fish. Becca, my snorkel buddy, and I decided on the chocolate-dip damselfish and the sergeant-major scissortail for our fish study. In the afternoon, after our lecture, we went to another reef on the exposed side of the island, called (charmingly) Washing Machine. It felt rather like being in a washing machine, actually, because it was quite a windy day. We almost went to a calmer reef, but decided that it was all right. Washing Machine was a really cool reef. It wasn't very deep until it dropped off of a coral shelf to around 15 metres. You could swim down and peer at all of the little critters hanging on the edge, which was pretty neat. I really like the yellow boxfish, which looks sort of like a bright yellow origami paper ball with fins, a snout, and brown spots. They tend to hang out in little crevices and swim around being friendly. But the current was strong, and there were some biggish waves coming back on the boats, so we got a bit cold and wet on the ride home.

Saturday night is barbeque night on Lizard Island. I was on cooking duty, so we made some potato salad with yams and a bunch of other stuff.

Sunday morning was Watson's Bay again. Beginning to notice a pattern? We went to Watson's Bay every morning until Saturday. But I get ahead of myself. Sunday afternoon we went to a beautiful reef called Horseshoe. Horseshoe is a special reef, because circumstances conspired to make it one of the most pristine reefs in the world. It's quite sheltered by the island, and so it hasn't had much damage from wave energy or big storms or anything. And, during the crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks in the past, Lyle and his wife Ann swam around and pulled all of the starfish off of the reef. Crown-of-thorns starfish are extremely spiny (it's really bad to get stuck by one, as they tend to cause infections and lost limbs), large echinoderms that eat coral. There are lots of things on the reef that eat coral, like butterfly fish, but crown-of-thorns are particularly efficient at killing coral. One starfish can easily take out several large colonies in a relatively short time. While crown-of-thorns are naturally occurring, something (probably that dastardly global warming) has been causing outbreaks of them along the reef, which is seriously damaging coral structure.

I could continue to give a day-by-day account of the rest of the Lizard Island trip, but it might grow a bit tedious. I don't mean to imply that the trip was in any way tedious. On the contrary, it was extremely enjoyable and fascinating. But it is impossible for me to describe with words how different each of the reefs was, and how incredibly vast the diversity and beauty of the reef was in each location. Suffice to say that we visited a new reef each afternoon, except Thursday, when we returned to Horseshoe.

I saw all sorts of incredible critters over the course of the week. On the second Thursday, I swam with a hawk-billed sea turtle, and touched its shell. They are amazing animals. They look like they're flying through the water. I also saw a quickly vanishing octopus, a few cuttlefish, and many squids. Squids are adorable. There was a little submarine (probably not the term for a group of squids, but it seems appropriate) of squids that I often saw in Watson's Bay, composed of three small, pink ones. But one day I saw eleven squids!

There are quite a lot of giant clams in Watson's Bay. They come in all sizes, but the giant ones (which are not at all uncommon) are about a metre long, if not a little larger. Clams are also very colorful critters. Although their shells are clam-colored, the clam part of the clam comes in all sorts of colors and patterns. Sometimes they have Maori-looking line patterns on them, or polka dots, or stripes. Sometimes they are fluorescent, and almost look like that dichroic glass that my mom likes. They can be pink, purple, green, blue, yellow, and all sorts of colors in between, although they aren't usually red or orange (red disappears after 3 metres in depth, by the way, because there's not enough light). They're really not very clammy at all.

The reason that I am going to great pains to describe giant clams has to do with my research on Wednesday morning. Becca and I were minding our own business, swimming along and laying out a measuring tape across a 25 metre transect of the coral and rubble zone. We were collecting data on the benthic composition of the reef, to use for our fish project, so every 50 centimetres we recorded what was under the measuring tape. Relatively straightforward. So we finished with our transect, and started to reel up the tape, when we realized that it was stuck on something. Something that seemed to have a bit more of a hold on it than the piece of coral we had attached the end to. Hmmm. We swam along the tape until we came to… a giant clam. Not just any giant clam, but a giant clam who had decided to close around our measuring tape. A giant clam which didn't particularly wish to relinquish its hold on our measuring tape, either. We were afraid to pull the loose end through the clam, because there was a pointy metal clip at the end of the tape, which would have torn up the poor clam. We waited half an hour. And it didn't open. Finally, we had to call Darren and have him come and scoot the metal end out, but it took some doing. The insolent clam seemed fine, although it refused to apologize, and we had rather an amusing excuse for failing to finish our data collection.

Other reefs that we visited included the reefs off of Pelfry and South islands, Mermaid Cove, and Vicky's (a.k.a. "Big Bikkies," which means lots of money in Australian). I always looked forward to the afternoon snorkel as a break from data collection and a nice swim, as well as a slightly longer boat ride. I loved being in boats all the time. Would have been fun to have a sailboat, though (although totally impractical for the research station, of course).

Both Tony and Shannon had birthdays during the trip, so I got on cake duty twice, which was nice. Tony's was chocolate with crushed Tim Tams, and Shannon's was carrot cake with ginger and raisins (she's one of those strange people who doesn't like chocolate). Had to use boxed cakes, unfortunately, but they came out all right. Shannon turned twenty-one, and was rather eager to celebrate, so someone got the bright idea to walk to the only bar on the island (that is, the only bar we're allowed to go to––I'm sure the resort has several). As it turns out, the only bar on the island is the Marlin Bar, which is for the workers at the resort. So we all set out on the sand roads, and walked about three kilometres until we got to the Marlin Bar. There was one other woman in the place. But, the intrepid SIT students were not cowed, and in we went. Karen and I were both pretty tired at this point, so we just had a gin and tonic and chatted for a bit, before making our excuses and heading off home, in the dark and pouring rain. Never before (and never again) have I walked six kilometres for a gin and tonic. They didn't even have any limes.

Saturday morning we got up and, atypically, didn't go to Watson's Bay. Well, that's not entirely a true statement. We got in the boats, drove to Watson's Bay, and then got off at the beach instead of snorkeling. We got on the path up to Cook's Look, the highest point on the island and a bit of a climb. The story goes that, after Captain Cook landed (he crashed on the reef coming in and had to get the ship fixed), he had rather a tough time finding a way back into open ocean again, because of the uncharted reef. So, he landed on Lizard Island and climbed the peak. It was too foggy for him to see anything, so he stayed up there for a few days until it was clear enough to see a gap in the reef. It's actually quite believable. The view from the top is absolutely incredible (I didn't take my camera because it was pouring rain on and off, but I'll try to get a photo from someone), and you can see all of Lizard, Pelfry, and South Islands (Pelfry and South are tiny islands right next to Lizard), as well as a few miles of reef.

When we got down from the climb we went snorkeling in the Clam Gardens, which is basically right in the middle of all the fancy boats from the resort. We had another Saturday evening barbeque (I was on dinner duty again), and went to bed. And Sunday morning we caught our planes and flew out, back to Cairns, our lab reports, papers, and exam.