Patty and Steve visit the overlook at Whitsunday Island.

The class is forced to smile together as a team.

The view of Hill Inlet from the Tongue Bay overlook.

Tongue Bay Hike to the overlook.

Whitehaven Beach Research Project

Neeta and Nikki display their sampling quadrat.

Our first day of scientific research went swimmingly, literally. Our mission was to monitor some seagrass beds off Whitsunday Island, a large island located between the Queensland coast and the Great Barrier reef farther offshore. This seagrass bed has been monitored by previous classes and our job was to add one more year's data to the database. These seagrass beds are important areas of habitat to many marine species, such as dugongs, as well as important nurseries for other species. These seagrass beds do not consist or real grass species but of plants closely related with waterlilies - they are called seagrasses only because of superficial resemblance. For unknown reasons these seagrass beds have been declining in health off Whitsunday Island's Whitehaven Beach. Our trip out to Whitehaven Beach was a wet affair as we bounced along on a twin 225 hp powered outboard inflatable through a rainstorm and wind-blown spray. Queensland is known as "The Sunshine State" and it says so on their license plates. However, it has been cloudy and rainy ever since we arrived one week ago. Upon arriving at Whitehaven we beached the inflatable and off-loaded our dive gear. The boat crew then laid down three 100-meter transects on the seabed running perpendicular to the beach with a floating buoy connected to each end. The job of each two-person dive team was to move along these transects and sample the seagrass at 10 meter intervals. The dive teams were equipped with underwater cheat sheets identifying the grass species so that the teams knew which grass species were present along the transect. This was a scientific dive, meaning that the dive teams were collecting data and not actually enjoying themselves. The water was a nice cool 76 degrees fahrenheit which did not help the enjoyment level at all. My dive team managed to collect our data with a minimum of difficulty as well as enjoy the company of some large sea urchins and some beautiful delicate basket stars (a type of crinoid). Once out of the water we enjoyed a fantastic lunch on a 7-mile long white sand beach. Dr. Phil Pepe managed to enhance our lunch experience by pointing out the various digestive and sexual organs we were ingesting as we slurped down our meal of mussels on the half shell. Our return boat trip was enhanced by an accompanying school of dolphins as well as numerous sea turtles.Our next dive will involve replacing some old rusting buoys that serve as protective markings of the coral reef. I am hopeful that this dive will offer more in the way of marine life than the last - it would be difficult not to. All in all though, I believe that everyone involved had about as good a time as is possible diving in 15 feet of water with nothing more than sand to look at. And I mean that in a good way!!