More Lizard Island

We didn’t go away from Lizard Island as the lift on the back of the ship stopped working properly. They spent all day today trying to repair it. They didn’t succeed, so we’re changing our trip. We were doing a clockwise circle. Now, we’re going to do it anticlockwise, probably with the Osprey Reef last. But they still think we’ll go everywhere.

We went to North Point on Lizard Island and did some more snorkelling. As usual, I didn’t go out very far, and the best coral area was a distance away but I was very happy with what I saw. Everyone was very impressed with the health of the coral.

In the afternoon everyone else went to MacGillivray cay and snorkelled there. I could have gone and sat on the beach, but they said it would be windy, so I didn’t. Some of the coral there was fluorescing, so it was under some stress and was likely to bleach. It sounded like I chose the best reef to snorkel, since I’m doing what I’ve been advised and taking it easy for at least a month (otherwise there’s the likelihood of getting long covid). 

As this trip is in conjunction with Australian Geographic, there are a lot of lecturers, a lot of lectures, and they’re encouraging us all to do a lot of citizen science. I think I’ll learn a lot more about corals and reef systems and be able to identify stuff by the time we’re finished, and there’s stuff I can do while I’m taking the afternoons off - for instance, cutting up my photos and entering them into the identification site like I did today.

It was another fantastic sunset.