HEALTHY HUMPBACKS EXPEDITION
Year 12 students from Silkwood High School, Mount Nathan Gold Coast.
On a 'Healthy Humpbacks Expedition' with Earthwatch Institute on Stradbroke Island.
Fantastic write up from their inspiring teacher, Alicia Kent-Rooney.
Her students continue to amaze and are always engaged ????
By Alicia Kent-Rooney (Year 11 & 12 Teacher - Silkwood High School)
Day 2: Minjerribah.
Camps at Silkwood are always about learning. And in the high school the emphasis moves more towards service learning. Today year 12 became s...cientists in the service of whale research as we headed out on a (tiny) inflatable to the wilds of the ocean. 3-metre waves, 30-knot winds and did I mention a tiny boat? At least the water was warm and it wasn't raining. We were soaked within minutes but also within minutes we had seen a pod of dolphins and the balletic movements of several pods of humpback whales. The first few popped their heads out of the water and there were a few pectoral fin and peduncle slaps and many blows. However, we quickly were treated to the 'money shots' - breach after breach after breach (videos being processed now). Apparently when the water is choppy whales need to make more noise to communicate with other pods. And really nothing makes more noise than a multi-tonne animal throwing itself out of the water and landing back down. It was spectacular. After all our 'ohhhhhs' and 'wooooows' it was back to business and we scooted in to collect skin samples from the surface of the water post-breach with the skimmer. We also tallied the amounts of whale behaviours we saw - and 10 pairs of eyes are better than 1. We saw a few distinct pods (including mothers and calves), a huge loggerhead turtle, a green sea-turtle and some humpback dolphins. Really amazing. Eventually back on dry land, we had lunch at gorgeous Point Lookout and a gelato for all our hard work, spotting whales from shore all the while. We stretched the legs along the blowy but beautiful Gorge Walk and headed back to the Research Station for more work. We recorded all our data from the morning's outing and headed to the computers to learn to categorise tail flukes. There is a database of 5000 photos with more due soon from this season and we attacked it with gusto. The students got the hang of it quickly, descended into 'fluke madness' and even got competitive and at the end of the hour we learnt we'd processed.........570 photos or roughly 10% of what needed doing. Ahhhhh the life of a scientist.