Posts Tagged ‘Great Barrier Reef’

James Cook University – Bachelor of Science

Australia February 1999 – June 2001

Townsville, Queensland, Australia

JCU LogoJCU – A world-class enterprise

James Cook University is Australia’s leading tropical research University. The University takes its name from the eighteenth century English navigator and explorer Read the rest of this entry »

Undersea Explorer

Undersea Explorer


Well, I have really have had the Gods on my side this last couple of years. Not only got into the MAST program in Canada, play with the most venomous snakes in the world through a snake handling course with QPWS, volunteer work at a Crocodile Farm and took care of about 600 estuarine crocodiles also known as saltwater crocodiles which is the largest crocodile species in the world. But I also scored a host position on Undersea Explorers Adventure Dive Expeditions! Read the rest of this entry »

Australia – March 2001

March – 2001-04-06

Hey how are things?

Wow, it’s April all ready April, but what happened in March then?

I started uni the last week in February and got into the swing again pretty fast and so did our lecturers by piling essays, reports, ministerial briefings and scientific posters our way. Read the rest of this entry »

Report – TO3025 – Daily Reflections

Daily Reflections Sunday the 24th of September. Read the rest of this entry »

Australia – July 2000

July 2000

I have finally got home from Maggie and our fieldtrip..
It has been a successful week educationally…

It started last week with my intensive course when I meet some old friends that I hadn’t seen for ages..
The whole course is called Animal Form & Function field course. It was divided into 5 groups; insects, mammals, amphibians and marine parasites. Read the rest of this entry »

Australia – Fall Semester 2000

July 2000

I have finally got home from Maggie and our fieldtrip..
It has been a successful week educationally…

It started last week with my intensive course when I meet some old friends that I hadn’t seen for ages..
The whole course is called Animal Form & Function field course. It was divided into 5 groups; insects, mammals, amphibians and marine parasites.

Basically I have had lectures from 9 to 5 everyday the first week! Little long sometimes but nice coffee pauses and the Ozzy tempo (=slow) it wasn’t too bad…

Second week (15th – 21th) we went out to Maggie and did the practical part of the course. During that week we started little differently but as early as 05.30 when we did the Bird chorus (listen to the birds when they wake up) the latest was when we had nocturnal mammals. Some days where pretty slack, e.g. the mammals, started at 7am finished at 10.30am…

My week looked like this:

Butterflies Monday 8am -3.30pm, where we went out to catch butterflies and brought ’em back in special thingies to id them. A special species where selected to estimate the population size… (mark and re-capture method).
we putted some b’flies in the fridge for 5, 30 and 60min to see how long time it took for them to thaw…
On the evening/night we went out to cheek out nocturnal spiders..

The Tuesday went to Horseshoe Bay to catch some fish so we could cheek for marine parasites.
I had a snoub nosed dart (food fish) it was not entirely dead when I picked it up from the bin in the lab, so I had to cut the main aorta under the gills, I felt little bad about killing it but when after 5 hours dissecting I had found 8spp. of parasites in the gills and intestine and thousands of cystod-cysts I realized this one had not long to live before it would die… It was no longer a fish but a collection of parasites in form of a fish…
Of the 8spp. 1 was totally unknown, 1 was REALLY rare, and another two was freshwater parasites and the fish is an saltwater fish seems little peculiar…

On the Wednesday it was time to face the reptiles, we went out to a creek called Gustav Crk which was a dried out creek with some small Billabong in a 120 meter transect we first observed the behavior of the lizards, and later on catch them for marking, id and weighting… I didn’t have any luck in catching them but my group was quite successful. The majority of the caught lizard was of the species Carlia rhombodalis , which is about 7-8cm long and weighs 2-3grms, cute little thing..

Mammals was up on the Thursday, so went again out to secluded area of Maggie to see if there as any different between two habitat (mangrove and woodland divided by a road) and if so, why..
The chosen mammal was the brushtailed Possum, we caught them by using special possum traps. We found quite a lot of possums and we checked the females for joey’s and measured the head length of both the adult and the Joey..
It was not only the females that was sexually violated ’cause we measured the testis on the males…
Before we let ’em go again we measured, weight and sexed them. In the ones we didn’t have a transponder one was placed under the skin in the neck.
In one of the traps a water rat was caught, really pretty!!

On the Thursday night, we went out to cheek for nocturnal mammals, I found four possums and one koala! a real cutie!! One really big spider (10cm between the toes, 4cm long body). as you might now if you shine your torch on the animals the light id´s reflected in there eyes…
The koala was the first wild koala I seen.

On the Friday we checked out birds but I have no real affection for small birds, and specially here in Oz ’cause the bird differ from home and all other continents.. so I felt I didn’t get so much out of it though I am leaving the country in a year!

2000-07-08

One week into July and I have had a experience of a lifetime…

I was pretty bored last week so I decided to drive out to Billabong Sanctuary 20min outside the city, to take some stock photos of the Australian and North Queensland’s wildlife.

I got some very nice photos of koalas, kangaroos, crocodiles and other cute and cuddly animals. There was an opportunity for hugging a koala and of cause I took the chance to hold this little teddy bear, the koala in question was an 18month-old baby, and was really cute!

I think that little thing didn’t leave any of us that cuddle it untouched!

When I held it the baby koala, pushed it’s hairy head onto my neck and just hugged me back when I was petting it’s back

Diving the Whit Sundays

The Great Barrier Reef lies in the Coral Sea 15-160 km (10-100 mi) off the eastern coast of Queensland, Australia. Often called the longest coral reef in the world, it is actually a series of coral islands, reefs, and shoals that extend north to south-east for over 2,000 km (1,250 mi). The coral formations are based on the outer, eastern edge of the continental shelf Read the rest of this entry »

Diving the S/S Yongala

The S/S Yongala is a wreck that lies off the coast near Townsville, North Queensland.

She is in about 30m of water and it is about 15m deep at her top deck. This is a must see dive, rumour says it’s one of the top 5 dive spots in the world!

The fish life is amazing, everything is big and I mean big Read the rest of this entry »

Australia – February 2000

======== 2000-02-09 ========

Hey Blokes!

I can’t understand how time just can disappear, like it has for me. I mean do YOU realise that it is February? I can tell you that for me it feels like I just celebrated New Year in Sydney!

I have been home for little more than a month now and did not get any job as a presumed before, but I don’t think that it will effect my future studies at all. (more than I have to start exercising little more).

I have had a lot of time to figure out what I want to do with my life, and I found some collages in Canada that really interested me but they are not within the area of marine biology at all. They are called Mountain Activity Skills Training program and Adventure Tourism program. Read the rest of this entry »

Australia – January 2000

January 2000!! **Millenium Change**

7-6-5-4-3-2-1 – 2000!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR was everybody screaming when the whole city of Sydney went on fire and especially the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House! The half an hour fireworks were so stunning so when we talk about them afterwards we couldn’t find words to describe them. After more discussion about the firework we came and think of the word WOW!!!

I had an American behind me where I was and took the midnight photos and he and his girlfriend was just screaming and screaming, saying words like wooooiiii!! And yelled out: Screw New York!! This is the place, this is the place to be, and we are just in the middle of it!!! He gave me some really good Champagne and shook my hand and wished me a Happy New Year!

The three Police officers that stood on the Jetty with us Read the rest of this entry »