AUSTRALIA!!

The end of one adventure, the start of a new. I don’t know if this will be an adventure per se, maybe more of a journey. I hope to make it around to a few cool places on weekends and such, maybe that will make it an adventure, otherwise it’s pretty much like going to work 5 days a week from 9 to 5. My first week was good, the first few days I met a ton of people I don’t remember the names for and did some computer stuff. Shane (one of my supervisors here) had me do some basic growth modeling exercises. I was lost for a little bit, he literally just gave me some books and was like ‘go at it’, but it actually wasn’t too bad. It was cool to see how to transform data into the growth curve, since I had read about it in some papers he gave me and had no idea what it was talking about. He said he will probably try and get me to do a yield-per-recruit model soon which scares me, haha.

The past few days I have been in the lab chopping up fishies, or more like hacksawing fishies. You have not had an arm workout until you’ve had to hacksaw a dolphin fish, let me tell you. As a general overview for those of you I haven’t told, I am studying basic pelagic fish biology (focusing on Golden Trevally) which is part of a bigger project going on a CSIRO. Right now I am extracting the otoliths, stomach and gonads of the fish as well as doing general morphometric measurements. In a week or so I should be starting the age/growth analysis part of the project which involves sectioning and counting the otolith rings, kind of like a tree. After that I will be doing a bit of histology to determine the stage of reproduction and such so that we can better see at what age (and supposed length with length-at-age models) they mature. Cool stuff, at least I think so. It’s all for fisheries management, so like making sure that the minimum size range they are imposing on commercial and recreational fishing practices is legit or if they need to change it.

To back track a little bit, my flight from Auckland turned out to be pretty awesome. I got food, wine and movies…all of which I didn’t expect. Woot! Before the flight I got randomly picked to do an interview about my time in New Zealand, complete with me describing everywhere we went, how we got there and what we did. It took a bit of time but it was cool to kind of mentally go through it again all the way through. He gave me some dvd thing for doing it but I have yet to watch it.

I am renting a room in Shane’s house for the time I am here and so far it has been good. He has a pool and a massage chair… :) And it’s a 10 min walk into town and a 15 min bike ride to work. Sweet deal actually. I am in Cleveland, QLD which is right outside of Brisbane. It’s basically my ideal place to live, right on the bay, near a bigger city and everything you need within walking distance not to mention mostly warm weather all year round and an island with beautiful beaches a 30 min ferry ride away. Now all I need is my friends and family to come join me, hehe :)

I spent the day today with a few guys from CSIRO doing a rec fishing survey around the bay, so I was pretty much straight chillin on a boat, in the ocean, during a gorgeous day. It was fun! I took some pictures that if I ever get my ident and computer at work ill put up here and on facebook. Also, until that happens I can’t skype either, hopefully once I get the computer that will work, we’ll see! For now I’m going to have to stick with this and email though.

Apparently there is a market Sunday mornings so I am going to go check that out tomorrow, should be fun. Hopefully I don’t buy too much, I literally have zero room in my luggage and I was 0.4 kilos under the weight restrictions for my flight. Phew.

I can’t believe I am here doing this internship, hopefully I don’t mess it up! It will definitely be a great experience and I am beginning to see how many great scientists are at CSIRO doing research, so cool. It kind of blows my mind some of the things they do and new ideas they think up. A little overwhelming and kind of puts a damper on what you think you can do personally, haha. It’s all good though, I will definitely learn a ton.


First bird I saw, it was right outside the house in a bush

Stradbroke Island


Morton Island


Sunset!!

Fun Fact:
From like 5-6 pm there are masses of bats flocking somewhere. I haven’t seen so many bats in my life, kinda cool to look up from my bike ride home from work and see them flying. They are quite large too.