In the Field

So while down here, I decided to do a side project looking at ornate rainbowfish. They're pretty little freshwater fish that occur in two colour morphs, a red and a blue one. So, we decided to start exploring the question of why are there two morphs? To start, we decided to go out into the field and collect fish and see if there were some environmental variables that correlated with which colour morph we would find. While we didn't gather enough data to conclude anything, we did discover that these fish like vegemite and cheese!

Holmes Reef

How cool is it you do nothing but dive for seven days?!

Flinders Reef

Flinder's Reef..... Lionfish where they are suppose to be - the Indo Pacific and NOT the Caribbean.

Wheeler Reef

After we dove the Yongala, we headed north to various reefs. First up was Wheeler Reef. This trip made me realize I really need a good underwater camera set-up.... I must also point out that these pictures are taken by both myself and my partner, so even though my name is on the pictures, it's joint credit :-)

Yongala

So the dive operator we went with, Mike Ball Diving Expeditions, had been chartered to do a trip from Cairns to Townsville with a specific stop at the Yongala. However, the boat also had to make a return trip, and lucky us, they still had some spots available. The wreck is like an oasis in the ocean. There is little around it for quite a bit, so it has become a biodiversity hotspot (trendy word, I know) attracting some amazing animals. We saw sea snakes, rays, fish (of course), corals and all sorts of invertebrates. One of the coolest things, however, were the Queensland groupers which were massive. They can grow to be several meters long, and would just be swimming around the wreck...

Above the water

Given we're trashing our planet as fast as we can, we figured we'd better get some Great Barrier Reef diving in before climate change and acidification ruins everything. So, we found a live aboard that went from Townsville to Cairns and promised for some excellent diving. And while I promise to get to pictures below the water, we had some nice shots above the water as well, including one of the best named birds, boobies!