Bimini Shark Course

Soooooo...
The upcoming Australian Adventure is not my first experience with UNBSJ Study Abroad. Last spring, right after exams, I was lucky enough to be a part of the 2006 Shark Course that goes to the Bahamas to a Shark Lab (Bimini Biological Feild Station). This course was one of the BEST experiences in my short life.
BBFS is a world renown research center where alot of shark research has been done, and was started by one fo the leading authorities on sharks, Dr. Samuel Gruber. The lab is still home to many students doing resarch for Masters or PhD degreees and has been on Discovery programs such as the Mythbusters adn Dirty Jobs.
Anyhow, although this doesn't directly pretain to Australia, I just want to mention this becasue it is about going abroad and gives me some cooler picture than just me doing paper work to post while I'm still in good ol'e SJ.

I've posted there pictures other places on the web, but I'll add them here too...

First off, some pics of the shark dives we did to watch feeding behaviour. What these consisted mostly of is gettign in the water and watching the 30 sharks (mostly Carribean Reef sharks, some blacktip, sharpnose) as someone through chum and chunks of fish inot the water in front of us.

Sometimes the sharks on the dive got alittle too friendly and swam right up. In this case, simply bringing up your fins in froutn of the sharks face was enough to send them away. Sometimes you had to make contact (ps, does NOT hurt them) like this:

This is one of the many many stingrays we got to feed at this one location, also had an awesome barracuda that woudl clack his teeth if you got too close

This is a young sea turtle that we found while ridge diving for nurse sharks

These pics are from one of my favorite moments of the trip. This is a pretty big tiger shark that was caught on the longlines and they are just gettign info on it (ie lenght, sex etc) before they let it go.

When you let them gom let just kinda sit on the bottom and recopperate before swimming away and you could get quite close.

These two are from when we were being taught how to propely hold a small shark. The first is a juvenille lemon shark that they were recooperating in a pen and the second is a juvenille nurse shark that was brought in for the "Dirty Jobs" camera crew that came in the day we left the site.

and, i guess that'll be it for now...must to work. feel free to ask anything about my trip, it wa sa great time a LOVe reliving

and so it begins...

So, this is the start of what will be many posts that relate to my upcoming adventure to the wild outback of Australia . . . I guess its kinda of a lie to say I'll be spending my time roughing it in the outback but I sure am going to Australia.

Last January I applied to the Study Abroad Program here at UNBSJ and on the March Break I got an email saying that I'd been accepted for my first choice of University: Jame Cook University in Townsville Australia.

So, who am I and why am I going to Australia, you might ask? Well, I am a third year science student here at UNBSJ taking my BSc in Honors General Biology with a Zoology Major - in other words, I am a huge science nut. I LOVE what I study...really. i'm sorry I just can't help be fascinated by the miracles inside every living cell. I also work for the university: I spent my summer in a tent in the woods, wrapping moss for some Graduate Students' research ad now I spend my workhours in their lab pulling leaves off moss adn lookin gat them under microscopes.

As you might have guessed, I am planning on studing Biology in Townsville, which is really exciting to a scientist. The tropical Australian ecosystems are sooo rich and offer a completely different spin on biology from temperate New Brunswick. I going to take courses on things like rainforest and coral reef ecosystems, which I could never really take here as, well... Saint jOHn isn't exactly the tropical rainforest hotspot, in case you hadn't noticed. Plus, to study in Australia had been one of my ultimate dreams in life for pretty much since I was in utero, and my mom can vouche for that, but I won't go any further into that for now. And on that note, I will stop boring you with my science dribble. Peace.