Hannah-Marie Lamle
I am, in every sense of the word, a homebody. I love to travel, go on vacations, see new sights, and have new experiences, but there comes a time when I get burnt out and just want to be static in my known comfy home for a time. Surprisingly, I did not find that to be the case for myself on Lizard Island. This place has truly enchanted me. I would love to have replaced Anne and Lyle, and live out the rest of my days in this tropical paradise. In my eyes, the facilities of the Lizard Island Research Station (LIRS) are second to none, and to Morgan Pratchett’s as well as I asked him on our farewell dinner. I couldn’t believe how beautiful everything was, and how easy all of the accommodations were. I would take sorting through garbage, the end-of-trip cleaning, the constant sand everywhere, and the huntsman spiders in an instant to have the LIRS facilities at my disposal.
A part of me regrets not getting the proper boating license for the trip, because despite my anxiousness when Lyle took us out for a checkout boating test, I do think that I would have been fine navigating my own boat with my peers. Emily did let me drive, which I am thankful for, and aided in my boating experience (which I need at FIU to be a crew chief), however I feel as though it would have been an awesome experience for me to do.
The scientific aspect of the course did not disappoint. It ran as a pretty standard field school in my eyes, and I was very happy to ramp up the work with lectures and field work during our time to feel as though I was maximizing my time and learning as much as I could. I enjoyed all of our guest lecturers, Brad and Nadine provided a background that I was not familiar with (and I don’t think I can say that I particularly want to pursue biogeochemistry or blue carbon work) but was very interesting, and probably some of the most important work of all researchers that are focusing on climate change. However, Dr. Morgan Pratchett was the real cherry on top of the trip for me. I wish that I would have engaged him more when he was with us at Lizard, but either way it was really great to make a connection with him.
The field work that Morgan taught us was not new to me, but it was a good refresher course, and was very fun to do while testing my new Pacific coral ID skills. It was so interesting also to learn about the different challenges that the Great Barrier Reef faces, and how those are different from the Caribbean. I knew a bit about the Crown of Thorns starfish, but had no idea that the aquarium trade was such a threat. I loved getting to conduct the fieldwork for our independent projects, and seeing as I’ll probably have a population demography chapter in my own PhD thesis, this was a great experience to get me thinking about some of the questions I can ask, as well as how to measure life histories. I also enjoyed hiking up Cook’s Look, despite it being just a bit chaotic, I loved to be able to step back in time and view the island as Captain Cook did.
The Australia Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) is definitely on my radar now as a potential postdoc opportunity. I think it would be so cool to come back and do some work in the Pacific with the techniques in photogrammetry and functional traits that I will have acquired with my PhD. This is definitely not something that I would have thought of myself doing before this trip. I also liked hearing about the intersection of social and natural sciences from our two lecturers at James Cook University. It is so important to understand the ecological functions that coral reefs provide us with, and I think sometimes I get so caught up in deploying every method for conservation and restoration that I don’t think about how they will impact native communities. Listening to some lectures and research that I was a bit unfamiliar with has also helped me to open my eyes to new avenues of research in the future. I thought that our last night presentations and introductions were a great success as well. I was really glad that Morgan came up to me after our individual introductions to talk about trait-based ecology and hypervolumes, and talked about a few other researchers that I should be looking into. Additionally, I got to talk and give some tips to his graduate student who will be starting a postdoc at AIMS soon using photogrammetric techniques. I really enjoyed both of those interactions.
Overall, I am really glad to have gotten this opportunity to visit Australia and the Great Barrier Reef, learn from some excellent researchers, and network with other young professionals in the field. I know that this experience will last a lifetime for me, and I am very excited to see how it shapes my future endeavors.