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