Living on an island

A question that I have found myself drawn to the last couple of years is how to create a world where there is room for both humans and nature. Living on an island automatically forces you to be more sustainable. Sustainability is not the focus of the research station, it is research, so some activities are by their nature unsustainable but some good practices are put into practice. In this post I'll give a brief description of life on this island.

The basics

Air, water and food. The basics. The air on the island is clean and speckled with stars at night so that's OK. Water can be troublesome on an island. There is plenty of salt water around, but fresh water can be scarce. Luckily this island has it's on freshwater aquifer (grondwater in Dutch). Water is pumped up and stored in large tanks uphill. This gives us the water pressure needed. We need to be careful when working with salt water at the station. If we spill too much it might pollute our freshwater supply, I was told.

Food definitely not a local supply. Every two weeks we have to order food online an this food is delivered by the supermarket to a barge, which takes two days to reach the Island. So by the time the food reaches our stomachs it has travelled quite a distance, with the carbon footprint that comes with it. The island is a national reserve so we are not allowed to catch fish close to the island and the station is not allowed to grow their own food, seriously limiting food self sufficiency.

Waste

Shipping waste off the island is expensive and the garbage is therefore separated. All non-meat food waste is composted, burnable materials are burned, recyclables as glass and some plastics are recycled and the remainder will be shipped out and ends up in a landfill. Since it is not allowed to grow food the compost gets buried. Human waste is collected in composting toilets and gets buried too. I know burying usable compost isn't optimal, but at least it feels good not to flush 10 litres of drinking water out every time you “go”.

Energy

Potentially you could use to bio-gas from the compost to cook food on to make some use of it at least. Right now we have gas bottles that fuel our stove. Heating water is not really an issue here since we are in the tropics. Each house is equipped with a solar hot water system and you can easily take a nice warm shower after you get out of the water. The ocean is about 24°C and even in a wetsuit it gets cold when you spend enough time in the water and a warm shower is really nice then.

A large proportion of the electricity is generated with solar power. There is a large photo voltaic solar system plus battery bank and the station runs on solar power during the day and a large part of the night. When the batteries run out a diesel powered generator takes over. The major energy consumers here are the sea water pumps. The aquaria on land are continuously supplied with clean running seawater. Pumping water is one of the most energy demanding things you can do, so a large proportion of the solar energy goes to keeping the seawater storage tanks topped up. The seawater tanks are placed about three meters above the ground so seawater can be gravity fed to the experiments.

Internet

Since I can post messages on our weblog you know I have internet on the island. However, internet is also limited. You either have mobile internet through your phone or you use the research stations' wifi. For both you need to pay and you'll only have access to internet at the station, 50 metres out it is gone again. For the wifi you buy 500 Mb access vouchers. I make sure that the pictures I post and send by email have been reduced in size, and I don't send movies. Furthermore, I have also closed down the automatic file synchronisation I had through dropbox since this would eat my 500 Mb rapidly.

Tides

The difference in water hight can be quite high, sometimes 2.5 meters between high and low tide, especially around full moon (spring tide). You have to plan your trips around the tide because you might not be able to get back to the moorings otherwhise.

Logistics

Before you can do any research at Lizard Island Research Station (LIRS) you have to have a permit from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA). This takes a looong time, so you have to plan ahead. On the plane to the Island you can only take a maximum of 30 kg baggage, if you want to take more you need to ship it to the station beforehand. You can place orders at special companies in Cairns and they'll ship it to you, for an appropriate price... When you arrive at the island you have to sign a small pile of paperwork, which gets significantly higher if you go scuba diving. However, after a short (re)introduction to the maritime VHF radio, a check of your boating licence and boating test by the station you are free to go exploring! 

I am staying at a house called "Loomis"

The main building of the research station

The central corridor of the research station

The dive shed. The blue fins you see are mine :-)

The boat log.

Work in progress

One of my colleagues made some pictures during one of my experiments. I thought it would be fun to share these with you!

The white sheet I used to mask the reef showing that the starfish need to see the reef in order to find it.

Starfish tracks in the sand

Now where did I put my net?!

Vertical transport

Falling stars

Starfish on "the beach"

Herding my starfish to the start position for the experiment

Field work

Field work

Today I have been at Lizard Island for little over a week. I needed a bit of time, but I think this field work business is growing on me. I had a bit of a tough start with stranding myself on an island. On top of that I badly bruised on of my ribs, got sea sick on my boat when the waves where high and I have a hard time diving deeper than 3 meters since in one of my ears the pressure doesn't equalise well.

However, with good dose of determination and patience things are looking up now. I know my way around the reefs now. My troublesome ear clears more frequently now. Furthermore, people come and help me. The other scientist look out for starfish for me. Additionally, one of the volunteers has been with me on two occasions. Anchoring the boat is easy with two people, it feels safer to be with two people in the water and it is more fun. Next trip I need to take somebody with me. Volunteers?

Science

This morning I managed to do a key experiment. I blocked the view to the reef with a 1x3 meter white screen. With the screen the animals move away from the reef, without the screen they go straight for it. Again, I got some help from a diving colleague with setting up the screen so that was great.

I also managed to measure how dark, or bright, coral reefs would appear to crown-of-thorns starfish. I bought a special colour filter that allows me to measure this with my gopro camera and I made pictures at increasing distance to the reef to see when they would still be able to see the reefs.

Social

I live in a house which can house 9 people. Now I live there with an American PhD student, but in the beginning of the week we shared the house with two girls. They met each other on this project but appeared as if they had been friends for ages. One of the girls did yoga and was interested in permaculture, so we had a lot to talk about.

Next week a whole bunch of people will be arriving that work on vision. I know one of them really well! His name is Yakir and he did his PhD project in the same lab as me in Sweden. I am looking forward to seeing him again. It's a small world.

Next time I'll write a post on living on an island. Lots of things need to be done more sustainably here and some resources can be scarce. More later!

Driving back from a sampling trip. The resort in the background.

Transporting starfish under water, using a net

Spiny monster on the move

View from my house

 

 

Commuting to work

Louise

For my work at Lizard Island Research station I have got my own boat now. She is called Louise and I use her to get to the reefs I want to work on. Below you can see the pictures I took after I drove the boat to "Mermaids cove" a sheltered beach with a quite large area of coral.
Unfortunately I have not been able to collect any crown-of-thorns starfish yet. In April 2014 a tropical cyclone called Ita hit the research station hard and a lot of coral got smashed up during the storm. The stag horn coral, which is the favourite food of the crown-of-thorns starfish, got decimated and is now regrowing. As a result I have a hard time finding the animals.

Stranded on a deserted island

Today I did notice that I got most of my boating skills from sheltered water. As I drove my boat around one of the smaller islands I misjudged the distance to the reef and the strength of the wind and got pushed onto the shallows. Waves were breaking all around me, indication that it was shallow everywhere, and I was forced to spend a couple of hours on the island until the tides came back and the water was high enough for me to drive out again safely. This period was somewhat frustrating because I was in the radio shadow of a big hill and I could not contact the research station directly using my VHF radio (marifoon in Dutch). I had to climb up a hill and another boat had to call the station for me to let them know I would not make it back at the registered time. (If you are not back at the time registered at the boating log, they'll come looking for you.) Fortunately, the tide came back as expected and I made it out of the shallows without further delay. Now, I am one experience richer and I've learned to keep even more distance from corals than I already did.

My boat Louise at Mermaids cove

Louise and my starfish sampling gear

Man at work

Townsville to Lizard Island

Townsville

It is now almost a week ago I said goodbeye to Eefje and the children at the airport in Townsville. I spend the following week wrapping up my experiments and preparing for my next trip. My stay in Townsville was very successful. I managed to do the experiments I wanted to do and I am pleased with the results. I can definitely publish this data in the future (publishing is the core business for us scientists).

The greatest thing was to share this experience with the family. We all loved the nature out there and it was great to me as a biologist to see the kids so enthusiastic about cockatoos, wallabies, cukabaras, triton snails and of course starfish :-)

It was a little sad and boring to be in the house alone, so after saying goodbye to my friends at the marine station, I was happy to go on to stay at my hosts house over the weekend. There was an art exhibition at the beach which was great to see and I hiked over the hill in Townsville centre, Castle Hill. On Sunday I took the train to Cairns. This sounded rather unusual to my host and the other Australians, but it was a very comfortable train ride to Cairns. Six hours of work mixed with relaxation. They had video screens in the seats in front you. Just like in air planes! The trains only goes five times a week. It departs from Brisbane and travels a staggering ~1600 km up to Cairns, not leaving the state of Queensland. This shows you how large Australia actually is. The train left two hours late because there was a small earthquake around Brisbane the day before when the train left. This forced the train to go slow. The second incident happened when we drove into Cairns. A couple of kids threw a rock at the train and the outside of the window of the people in front of me shattered.

Cairns

Now I am back in Cairns. I spend a short holiday here with the kids and it felt familiar to be back. I bought some last supplies for my trip to the Island, since it'll be a lot harder to get supplies on the Island. The hotel was great and now I am waiting in the waiting room for my flight to the Island. We'll be 2 people on the plane, so it'll be a small airplane :-)

Lizard Island

I'll write more about the Island later. First some pictures from Townsville, Cairns and the first glimpses of  Lizard Island.

A nice art display along the beach in Townsville

A shattered train window

Flying foxes in the city centre of Cairns

My pilot and my plane

Nice views from the window

Lizard Island, straight ahead!

We are home again!
The journey back home went really smooth. I had prepared myself for a slow pace with the children and explaining everything (especially to Fleur), no expectations and just go with the flow. This worked really well. Ofcourse I was exhausted when we finally landed in Copenhagen, especially beacause the children didn't sleep moren than 3-4 hours during the whole trip (of 29 hours). And it felt really weird arriving in this time-zone, being 6.00 o'çlock in the morning, but feeling like late in the afternoon, the light just wasn't right!

That whole first day here was a blur for me, we just fought to keep our eyes open and waited the whole day to finally go to bed in the evening.

And what have we been doing the last couple of days? Well we picked up the car (wouldn't start at first but did eventually...), filled up the fridge again with groceries, got Loekie our cat back (he had to get used to us again...kids just love that they have their own pet again..), tried to get some sleep (kids waking up at three in the night, can't sleep anymore..). We still have to pick up our plants and our mail from our dear friends who have taken care of that.

At the moment it is still a bit of a blur, we have to adjust again being here and my stomach and my mind haven't really landed here yet. We also found out that our Swedish is a bit rusty, haven spoken only Dutch and English in three months. Nils was a bit shy the first days to speak Swedish again and Fleur still thinks everyone speaks Dutch or English... We will get there again! It just takes time :-)

First flight: Townsville to Brisbane (2 hrs)

Yippee we get to go by train to the international airport!

Nice mosaic in Brisbane airport

We LOVE Singapore Airlines!

This was gonna be our second flight: Brisbane - Singapore (8 hrs)

In the middle of the night playing with other hyperactive kids
at the playground.. (Nils and Fleur are in thesee-through  tube..)

Still happy in Singapore

Our third airplane: Singapore - Copenhagen (12 hrs)

Amazing view in the night

Still happy and awake! Only 1 hour left to go

Second day home again: the brother-sister bond continuous to be
very strong!

We are almost going back to Sweden again! Our adventure here is over in two days.
The children and I are leaving on monday while Ronald stays another week here at AIMS. Thereafter he will be going to Lizard Island for more research, this time in the field (read: tropical paradise, coral reef, snorkling...) This is an amazing possibility for him, but we are really gonna miss him!!! :-(

I have some more mixed feelings at the moment, I am happy that we will go back to our familiar home, friends, climate and seasons, our own timezone and our cat and we will be closer to family, But I will miss the house here (so much space and freedom!! We can run around and play with the kids and only disturbing the wallabies...) and the animals, our 'private' beach, Alligator Creek, Billabong (the animal sanctuary) the wonderful library and toys library. I will also miss the city and its endless possibilities.
The things I will NOT miss are definitely the mosquitoes (!), the have to drive everywhere (I long to my bike!!!) and the cramp in my foot after a day driving.

When we first came here I felt completely overwhelmed by the fact that it is so different here from anything I have experienced before. It is so rough, big, dry, spectacular, sunny, hot. I was pretty scared, I was especially scared to go outside because of the snakes and other animals I feared would be there. When time passed I learnt more and more about the animals here (mostly thanks to the very friendly rangers at Billabong animal sanctuary) and I discovered that there is not that much to be afraid of. As long as we be careful, stay away from dangerous animals when we see them (never saw them in the wild by the way!) don't ignore the warning signs and keep an eye open for wallabies crossing the road.
The last ones actually caused the most dangerous situations. Wallabies here are like rabbits, they are everywhere! Not a day goes by that we not see at least one wallaby grazing and at least a couple more dead along side the road. They tend to jump back into the forest when we come too close, but sometimes they decide to go and jump to the forest on the other side of the road and than it's a good thing to have proper breaks in your car!

This stay in Australia has been and is such a wonderful and challenging experience. We have learned so much! Not only about Australia and its nature, history, climate and how it is to live here, but maybe even more about ourselves and one another and us living closely together as a family under different and challenging circumstances and Fleur and Nils as siblings.

Fleur and Nils really found each other. It took some time, but they became very inventive and creative in their play together. They started using their imagination more and more and loved playing in nature. It turned out that they didn't need much toys, they found their own; seeds, leaves, sticks, stones, sand etc. or inside the house: blankets and cushions were favorite. 

Fleur discovered how much fun it is to draw in sand. So everywhere we went, if there was sand, Fleur would sit down and start drawing with a stick or a stone or just her finger.
Nils was really fascinated by the Australian wildlife and wanted to know everything about what he saw. Just like his father ;-) ! But his greatest interest was and is definitely airplanes and trains, he can not stop talking about this! So he is very happy that we get to fly back home again!

Inspired by the creativity of Fleur's drawing I re-discovered my art-passion, I started drawing, we visited galleries and I have been reading a great book of Kelly Rae Roberts: Taking Flight. The drawing I tried out is called tangling (in a mindful way drawing patterns in a certain shape) and is 

One of my zentangle creations

very easy and fun, but takes a lot of concentration and precision. The book of Kelly is about 'inspiration and techniques to give your creative spirit wings'. Kelly Rae Roberts is a mixed-media artist who makes beautiful and inspiring art and when we get home I will definitely gonna try out some of here techniques (painting and collage) and see whether I can develop myself more creatively and find my own style. (I have tried out many things before, but haven't really found my style yet..) I am really looking forward to play with paint!!!

One of Kelly Rae Roberts' prints: I love it!

Another thing that has really helped me facing the challenges here and actually mostly helped me facing myself and my feelings and thoughts is, of course, my mindfulness practice. I already used to practice every day, but now more than ever I experienced the difference of skipping a day or not. Through my mindfulness practice I can keep in touch with my own calm inner self during the day and see from a bit more distance how surroundings, activities, other people but also food and my own thoughts and feelings affect me and I can more clearly see what I want in certain situations, what I need and what is most important and try to act to it.

I am so grateful that we got the opportunity to go on this adventure as a family and that we have experienced what we have experienced!

Just some more beautiful pictures of Nils and Fleur playing: