End of the trip: Beginning of my life.

Here we are guys. This is my last blog on the last day of the program. Upon coming into this program I thought that I might have some idea of what it was going to be like. I mean I’ve studied abroad before in high school and the program had a class at UT where we prepared for the trip I felt somewhat ready when I left. Looking back at the last few weeks I realize now that nothing could’ve prepared me for this experience. There are just so many details that have shaped my life until now that I could never have prepared to expect. I thought that I was set when I left the states. I had just completed a major milestone (graduation) and I felt like I was about to go on a last vacation of sorts before I embarked on a new career. I know now that change is around every corner. This trip was a stepping-stone of change in a small amount of time and I find myself in a state of whiplash when I look back at it all.

This adventure has taught me to expect anything. My trips to the hospital on the first few days were terrifying but I learned a part of local culture that a lot of people take for granted. I got to meet the faces of the heart of this society. I interacted with health givers that breath life into Australian citizens in an extremely personal way. I am forever indebted to these ordinary heroes for making me feel so comfortable and safe in such a scary, new place. That situation also made me realize how much people back home had my back. All of our program leaders were on the ball about getting information from me to my parents and the university. They wanted to know everything that was going on every step of the way so they wouldn’t lose track of that status of my well-being. Also, Dr.Kris Wilson, the  teacher that guided us through this trip.

 

Dr. Kris has taken care of us since before we even got here. He stayed with me at the hospital and listened to my needs. He even missed our first speaker to accompany me to the hospital and I will never forget that.  He has been and ultimate caretaker and our permanent guide for the past month. He has challenged us to think about this program and our lives back home. We have been prompted to reflect on our experiences while they were fresh in our mind and to make connections to our situation back home. We have been taught to be critical of our impact on this changing environment and to think about how we would relay the weight of this knowledge to people who aren’t fortunate enough to have the direct encounters that we’ve been granted.

I am so thankful for these introductions to a life beyond my own and I will hold them in a special pocket in my mind. I have seen things I could never imagine at every turn we’ve taken on this trip. I will never forget the way the water looked when I dived into the Pacific for the first time with a snorkel on my face. That beach was absolutely beautiful but the waters below had a story to tell of beauty, life and wonder. I welcomed that clear, blue water and I let it take me deeper into its depths than I ever thought I could go and I am so grateful to have been able to explore that. I will miss hearing the sea outside my tent every night. I will long for the breeze to calm my excitement from the day’s adventure and to carry me softly to sleep.

I also can’t believe that I got to wake up to a rainforest! My only notion of a rainforest before I left for this trip was the picture I had in a textbook in eighth grade biology.  Its almost unbelievable to me that I got to leap into those pages and delve within the beauties of a real rainforest. This environment always seemed foreign, dangerous and jungle-like to me but I’ve gotten to face my fears and to understand the bio-diversity of this beautiful environment. Our guide, Barry taught us how to read the bush and to understand it and now I know that everything, whether it can speak our language or not, has a story.

Lets not forget the wonders of the Gorge. The Carnarvon Gorge interested me from the time I Googled it in my living room in Austin. All of the background research in the world could not match the busy trickle of the wanted ripping form the aquifer at the heart of the Artesian spring system. No webpage could have instilled within me the accomplishment that I would feel from climbing 900 stairs to get to the Boolimba bluff overlook. I don’t think any brochure could ever have explained the rich cultural spirit I would feel upon viewing the religious history of one of the oldest cultures in the world on the cliffs of the Gorge’s Aboriginal “art gallery”.  No one could have convinced me that I would delve into 3 feet deep, freezing water in the middle of a tight, dark canyon in the middle of the earth.

 I’ve seen things beyond what I thought I ever could. This experience has opened the doors to a new standard of living for me. It has also raised a new sense of awareness of my footsteps in this world. There have been a lot of moments in this endeavor where I’ve questioned my role as a human in nature and the environment. I gotten an unsurpassable chance to face nature and see the story of human interactions in the environment as they existed in the past and contemporarily. I have looked up at the stars and have gone back in time as if I was lying next to an indigenous inhabitant. Like all things too surreal for pros to explain, I will end this experience with a poem.

Mates of this Phila

I cannot say

How man senses I explore in a day

But from the salt I taste after floating on the reef

to trotting through the rainforest

trying to avoid the locked latch of a leech.

I am humble for the animal in me.

I have the power to travel, to love and to dream

I can stitch my life

Into the most unique of seems

 I am a civilized puppet

A part of life’s natural scheme

I can speak my mind

And mates of this phila

Can know what I mean.

True, these upright footsteps can be heavier than they seem

But I can learn to tread lighter

than the majority of my team.

This world we run

will someday be done

but the stretch of this organ behind my eye

reaches further than any expanse of land, water or sky

I have made my mark.

Just as those in the future that will pass

We have made our mark and

Like it or not,

it will last.

Our Talk in the Woods

Simon Ling leading our happiness discussion

On one of our walks Simon surprised us with a seemingly random talk about happiness. We started talking about how cultures sustain themselves, which opened up a Pandora’s box to a whirlwind of ideals about the importance of cultural welfare versus economic prosperity. Needless to say, we were there for a while. A lot of people differed on their opinions of how they should live their lives based on personal frameworks of how they saw the world. This was such a difficult conversation because the reality of this conflict was almost tangible. It was really frustrating to me that there is no real measure of happiness in the world yet there is a gage for anything and everything that, on the surface, drives economy. It feels a bit like people are just slaves, stock to count and measure to see how hard they can work and make you money.

Throughout this discussion I could not stop thinking about the Gapminder Ted Talk by Hans Rosling. 

I first saw the presentation as an example of how to get passionate about data and it was incredibly influential. This Swedish statistician compares the growth of individual countries using values like, mortality rate, birth rate, economic development and public welfare to prove that having economic abundance does not equal happiness. What I remember most about this talk was that countries that started out poorer than America with higher social welfare rates caught up relatively quickly and in some cases even surpassed the U.S.

I’ve wanted a family since I was young enough to record this wish in my diary at the young age of five. This was cute at first but then I received all these negative messages toward childbirth, which I understood as a teenager. However, when I hit my twenties the dissenting voices grew even stronger. There were anti-family sentiments from family, media, professors and even my peers. I always wrote this attitude off as a plea for young adults to wait until their responsible to have children. This may be a cautious social practice but it seems weird to me that, as young people, we are so pressured to begin our lives, make large amounts of money and “consume! consume! consume!” but there is virtually not support for young families in American society.

It’s not fair to be forced to lead your life in a certain way when you’re comfortable living in what is supposed to be a free country. It’s hard not to feel helpless in this system when you’re swimming against the gradient. We are constantly fed messages prompting us to work our butts off but in our talk in the words Simon informed us that money can only influence happiness up to 72K a year. He also informed us that he is below the poverty line in Australia and couldn’t be happier with his “off the grid” living situation. He and so many other people participating in what he called a “down shift” are proving our greedy society wrong. After a certain age Simon noted that people in Australia shift from consumerism to self-actualization. They begin to do things that make them happy like travel, partake in hobbies and focus on friends and family. It seems to me that this is the message that we would be receiving in America but of course that couldn’t be because that would put a dent in measurements like the GDP (Gross Domestic Product), which is the government’s way of making sure that we have the standard of living that makes society money. The glaring problem in this equation is that there are no known measurements of factors that enhance national satisfaction. This is why things like historical cultures and landscapes are in trouble because there’s nothing in our economy to record the importance of their beauty to global well-being. This is silly because there is obviously a market for happiness but it seems to existential for bureaucracies to break into.

Incorporating a scale that could delve into a community’s self-actualization value would send a message to citizens that the government cares about them and the world they live in. It might pave the way for sustainability and social welfare instead of one that often urges us to use resources past their potential. I know that I would be a lot happier working to support my family if I wasn’t battling against the perpetually poor economy just to get out of debt enough to start one.

The Collective Canyon Crawl

Have you ever gotten to rump around in a geological wonderland? If your answer is not then we were in the same boat until a few days ago.

It finally became time for me, along with my class of 14, to explore the beautiful landscape of the Carnarvon Gorge.  I was particularly excited about this part of the trip for two reasons: 1.This is the location I chose to focus on before we ever left our classroom.; 2. Our previous guide, Barry, mentioned the beauty of this location more than a few times in Binna Burra. I decided to interview him about it before we left and he said that he believed that he thought that the Gorge would be there forever. This statement was both refreshing and surprising since we’ve been caught in a bit of doom and gloom about the inevitable environmental drawbacks of climate change. I wanted to know more and a week later I was to find out.

It was a bumpy, 10-hour transport but before we even get to our camp there were some exotic wildlife to see. I saw heaps of kangaroos, wallabies and emus grazing in the golden woods of the outback. Suddenly we were in our campsite on the outskirts of the Gorge and there was green to be seen for miles. We officially met Simon, our last guide, the next morning and he informed us that we were to go on a really “fun” optional hike through a canyon in the Gorge. I’m not going to lie; I was pretty scared. We were warned to prepare for water as high as our chest and so far all of our hikes had been dry ones.

It started out normally but we quickly met what seemed like a crack in the earth. Surrounded by rock we entered the canyon and the view was just incredible. I felt a small, cool wind that made a soft whistle that brushed past my ear. I felt as though I was in a moss-covered room created by the earth with a permanent sunroof and then came the obstacles. I cradled my camera and set one foot forward through a series of logs and rocks. I went into survival mode and strategically made my way through this geographical labyrinth. It was a bit easier when we started but there was one point where everything was up and down. We had to use strength and balance to navigate over slippery sediment. I saw people struggle, which made those behind pretty nervous but when we got to the water we were presented a whole new challenge.   

I made sure there were no leeches before I stepped in but this water was so dark and icy that I was still afraid to plunge into the unknown. When we all descended you could tell that this wasn’t a popular part of the trip for anyone by the collective swears, moans and sighs echoing throughout the rocky walls. It was a trying excursion but we waded through and finally made it to the end of our journey and got to experience the whole thing again on another trying trek back to the entrance.

During that hike and every endeavor after it I kept my group topic fresh in my mind, which was essentially “How was this landscape explored here versus now?” I feel so caught up in the comforts that were available to us on this trip that it seems impossible to imagine experiencing the habitat as a truly wild setting with no paths, signs or guides to lead the way. It really is humbling to think that we, as humans, have rose above thinking of ourselves as a particularly susceptible part of nature but being in places with such a rich natural history reminds me that it wasn’t always that way. It has taken resourceful steps and technological advances to get to the levels of comfort and safety that a lot of us have the privilege of accessing. It really makes me aware that I am a part of something larger than myself, a collective conscious similar to what Aboriginals believed in. Needless to say, it was beyond cool.

Eco Tourism: The Green Family Vacation

The idea of the family vacation has been an integral part of what it means to be a family for as long as I can remember. My dad always asks our family where we would like to go for he and my step mom’s two-week vacation in the summers. These trips were mandatory, regardless of if I liked the destination or not. At first we’d skip summers because we didn’t always have enough money to travel but when my dad bought into the wonderful world of timeshares we rented a big, gas-guzzling SUV and traveled every summer. This was the story for millions of families of the past and it will until the end of time. We have our small bubble IE: a four family home but when you multiply that by your neighbors, your city and your state you may begin to realize that things add up.

A professor of tourism by the name of Robert Nash gave us a lecture on the impacts of tourism right before our short exploration of the famous Gold Coast.  As we know, there are tons of positives to tourism. The theory is that locals get jobs, foreigners get exposure to the local culture and grand, beautiful infrastructures get built that everyone gets to enjoy! Perfect right? Not so much. Taking a closer look into the effects of mass tourism there are a lot of opportunity costs that come into the mix. Local communities have to lose some of their native traditions to appease Western comforts. They have to provide fancy hotels and cheap souvenirs. The presence of an abundance of outsiders taking advantage of the sanctity of indigenous culture also turns into an exploitation of those people. In this situation, local integrity can actually be lost when a large amount of people began to compromise the beauty that was once only explored by a few.

Aside from moral issues, there are multiple economic issues that just don’t match up with plans associated with mass tourism. Taxes are levied on local people to fund building or renovation plans that must occur to please tourist. In the case of Hawaii, inflation makes it hard for people that live there to afford anything but there’s always a catch 22 because the natives depend on tourism for most of their economy. In the case of jobs, it is not uncommon for companies to hire out or even contract workers that they prefer to man these tourists hot spots instead of people living there who are sharing their land.

One thing that I noticed is that a majority of ploys to get tourists to visit your country are tied to traditional events that I never have seen as such. BBC  network produced an info graphic on the harms of this historical sporting event actually does more negative than good economically to the cities that host the event. It was surprising to me because the Olympics is pretty iconic and always gets hyped up as a cultural mixer for multiple countries. Jackson pointed out that most of the interactions between tourists and locals in this situation have to do with monetary transactions, which is pretty superficial.

For instance, the Olympics, 

To say the least, this lecture was disheartening, especially when you consider the fact that we were the very tourists that Jackson seemed to be preaching against. The day before we actually got a big new bus, which we were initially excited about, but now all we could think about was how it represented a gas-guzzling symbol of Western comfort. Regardless of all this, I am a firm believer in positivity and hope when it comes to human kind. Like it or not, we are part of nature and it is true that we have the power to destroy life but we also have are more capable than any other species to save lives as well. There are things we can do to travel safely and sustain the beauties of this world.

Eco tourism is a form of travel that includes treading lightly on natural territories and using an environment sustainably. Backpacking, in my opinion, is also a form of eco tourism that includes experiencing a foreign atmosphere for longer periods of time. It is a form of small scale tourism in which in you stay in smaller, cheaper hotels and have direct, personal contact with the locals of the country you inhabit. Ways that people can lessen the impacts of mass tourism are to stay in places for more than a few days and stay and smaller scale hotels like hostels rather than resorts that use a lot of water and energy. Also, try your best to respect the rules of the natural environment you are in, for instance, don’t climb a sacred mountain if there are indigenous signs warning against it. Tourism isn’t evil but, like everything else, moderation is key.  I know I’m convinced because the pictures of what happens when a beautiful place gets all of its resources sucked out by a massive amount of people are not pretty.

Changes

This time, when we departed from our comfortable city hub of Brisbane, we embarked on a mountainous excursion to the beautiful, nature filled Lamington National park. As the road wounded and my ears popped I looked out of the window. Greeted by a steep valley of green trees stretching into a blue haze as far as the eye could see, I knew I was far from familiarity. Butterflies welled inside the pit of my core and I imagined what adventures could possibly await me among this wooded expanse of wooded earth. I found Barry Davies, our next guide, and he told stories of fact and fiction—but mostly fact—that laid ground for this blog, where I will discuss adaptation. We’ve all been familiar with this term since learning about Darwinism in middle school. However, one pressing piece of evidence that I will take from this trip, as a whole, concerns the fact that notions we have of ideas versus being in a situation where we can experience them first hand has a poignant impact on your critical process.

We stayed at Binna Burra lodge, an eco tourist haven with cabins, campsites and fireplaces galore. What was most striking about this place however was the trails that led to the rain forests

of the surrounding park—declared a World Heritage site in 1994 for its outstanding demonstration of natural history. Barry took us on a 7 hours hike into rainforest after a quick introduction to the area and I witnessed this historic wonder directly. There were so many different trees and plants in each area. At first, it seemed almost like a random mess but when I looked closer I realized that this was the natural order of things.

Plants grow and compete for space and sunlight. Those that don’t have the evolutionary skills to adapt die but this is not a dead end. They decompose and become part of the earth again, giving other plants the nutrients they need to survive. Bigger trees also provide homes for insects, moss and smaller animals while they break down. One interesting example of this phenomenon was the vine tree, which grows in tropical rain forests. It finds a host tree and grows up and around it into the sunlight peak of the canopy, eventually killing its host. The deliberate twisting bark of this huge specimen is fascinating but there are tons of examples like this in the rainforest.

It is funny that we use the term “the rainforest” because there are multiple rain forests contained in what we would consider one overarching area.  In one day of hiking we experienced three different rainforest areas: subtropical, warm temperate and cool temperate.  There is a very noticeable change when you work your way up through each of these climates.

“The cooler it is the simpler the rainforest” says Davies

In warmer climates such as tropical and warm temperate you will see a thicker canopy with more vines and huge trees with out-stretching buttress roots dominating the forest floor.  When we moves upward to the cooler temperate forest we still saw huge tree but with more spacing and less of the outstretching roots we noticed earlier. It also got a bit drier so, at a certain point, we moved from an expansive covering of trees and canopy to rays of light piercing through the canopy with grasses and bush trees radiating from the ground. When we moved to a very high and dry part of the trail our guide prompted us to sniff out our surroundings. He made note that, in dry climates, plants become aromatic in an attempt to keep things from eating them.  I thought this was particularly odd because things work completely different in the mind of a primate such as myself. If I smell something good I’m more tempted to put it in my mouth. This was just another lesson that taught me that I was in a different world than the one I was used to and that though, as humans, we are seen as ultimately resourceful beings that we are not very sustainable.

There are aspects of natural adaptation and competition that may seem cruel or backwards to use but it is the natural order of things and it has worked before any human was here to take note. These changes are also a lot more natural than the ways humans choose to adapt to our changing climate. We turn up the air conditioner when we get hot, take multiple showers when we sweat or watch TV when we get bored. All of these things take away from the natural environment but all trees know how to do is give back and adapt in ways that will add to their environment. Sadly, all of the ways that humans change their surrounding also tend to be instant whereas plants and animals of the rainforest need hundreds of years to adjust.  I know we are all use to the familiar plea to “Save the rainforest” but what we really need to think it to sustain the rainforest because they don’t need our help much beyond that. Plus it sounds better thank “Stop killing the rainforest” which honestly is more accurate.

Greater than Galveston

 

Lets talk about coral. I snorkeled over tons of it and--on this trip--I became aware of the fact that I really knew nothing about it. I know that its not at the top of everyone's list when we have such cute domestic and land mammals to distract us in America but, nevertheless, this organism is more alive and interesting than most people think. 

My most memorable interaction with the sea came with playing in the oil-polluted waters of Galveston, an island near Houston, Texas. My mom would take me there and I’d play in the water all the time thinking nothing of it’s dingy brown hue or virtually lifeless waters. Snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef and taking time to learn about all the life forms that depend on the reef was an eye opening experience for me. It really made me redefine my mental framework of what could exist in the ocean.

It is true that coral is mostly skeleton and relatively a thin layer of actual living matter but what is fascinating is that coral are indeed alive. They don’t move much and can be pretty hard to the touch often leading us to believe that they are passive and brainless. Some people may know that coral provide shelter to a lot of sea life but we often ignore them as living beings.

Picture it like this: We often have connections to our own homes right? We build them, take care of them and fix them. We mold them to our comfort and grown dependent on them. We have the familiar expression “If these walls could talk” which shows that humans sometimes see a home as a living extension of themselves and their experiences. Well what if your home was a living species that couldn’t talk but could sustain itself? It can’t and never will but coral has been able to since the beginning of time.

“They are the basis for the ecosystem” says Joseph Pollock, a PHD candidate at the Australia Institute of Marine Science. He studies coral diseases and knows how important they are for our seas.

So what exactly about a coral makes it alive? Cnidaria. They are a part of the same category as jellyfish. They, like these more familiar creatures, polyps (stingers) that eject when possible predators or food come near. They also have no central nervous system but deep inside they do have a mouth.  By themselves coral are pretty small but they colonize, or group together, pool their resources and get energy from their environment.  They feed on plankton but roughly 80% of their energy comes from the sun. They indirectly harbor this fuel from algae that they depend on for photosynthesis like little solar panels. This is also where coral get their classic red and pink color.
Well coral are part of a class of sea life called

 Believe it or not, coral even have sex!

Coral Spawning 

Coral spawns every year based on moon cycles, currents and the time of day. They must be accurate in their detection of the right breeding conditions because, as I mentioned earlier, coral have to get with the groove and colonize or they can’t start building themselves up. Like any strong structural organism coral have to first find a good sunny spot in the ocean, then they proceed to build up a skeleton so they aren’t so tiny and vulnerable. This structure becomes home to worms and other small species like fish and crabs that live inside them. Our friend the giant clam also settles within this skeletal structure.

How coral interact with each other is perhaps the most recognizable aspect of their behavior as organisms. There are different species of coral and they have a variety of strengths that allow them to compete for resources space and sunlight. When two competing coral exist too closely together they have one of two direct defenses. They can either release filaments full of stingers in an attempt to hurt the other one or they can essentially throw up all of their stomach acid onto the other coral, which does damage as well. They will do this until one gives up and starts to grow away from the other ending the space war. They can also indirectly compete. For instance there is a type of coral known as boulder coral that would be better at taking damage from storm waves than say branching coral which have branch like polyps that aren’t very durable when it comes withstanding strong forces.

It is amazing to me how full of life and adaptive a seemingly passive organism can be. Unfortunately, they can only do so much. Human activities like dredging, coastal run-off and over fishing herbivorous fish hurts coral because it disrupts the sensitive environment in which they must thrive making them more susceptible to disease. There are also indirect threats like ocean acidification and ocean warming. The former makes it hard for coral to build up their skeletal base and the latter causes a process know as bleaching. Bleaching occurs when the algae living on coral are subjected to high temperatures and begin to release harmful chemicals to coral. The coral responds by kicking the algae off of its body, which can be fatal if the waters don’t return to normal temperature, allowing the coral and algae to stabilize and continue in peace.

Life among coral

I am glad that I left Galveston and was able to see a community so different from my own. I’ve also heard about the Great Barrier Reef but I never knew how it actually would connect to my life. There are many useful reasons that coral exists but all you really need to do is gaze upon its beauty along with the peacefulness of the amazing life forms that inhabit it to want to preserve this natural wonder of the world. I really don’t want a world where all my child sees are oil-saturated waters.

“If you’re out on one reef there’s a million stories there” Says Pollock.

There is no doubt in my mind that I want future generations to know those stories.

Joseph Pollock diving among plate and branching coral

A World Below

A View from the beach onto the Pacific from Lady Elliot Island 

It has been a week since leaving our WiFi “hub”, the bustling city of Brisbane.  We stayed in the beautiful beach town, Hervey Bay for a bit to wait for our guide and get prepared with the 22 lbs of stuff that we could bring with us when we left for our next destination.  We had quite an early departure time and we were having so much fun at Hervey that I honestly didn’t want to leave. I had a lot of fun walking along the beach, gazing upon the horizon that stretched out into forever. Our accommodations were also eco friendly but also comfortable and spacious. Little did I know, that we would find a space more vast than I have ever seen. 

One of many blue starfish living among the coral

  When we landed on a very tiny runway in a very tiny plane, I felt claustrophobic and tired. I was only a bit acquainted with our guide, Joseph Pollock. My ears pricked when he decided to shake things up and suggest that we dive right into the reef with our newly rented snorkel gear. We were on Lady Elliot Island, a secluded resort surrounded by the South Pacific, and I could not ever imagine the views that were waiting for me beneath the beautiful blue water.

 I was introduced  to the islands allure by a world of sea life. This was a new experience that made me nervous, however, that quickly went away because I couldn’t stop looking at everything below. Joe gave us facts and tidbits here and there about some of the organisms but I think he wanted to let us cherish this experience as our own. It was low tide and we were pretty close to the coral so we could really see all the sea cucumbers, clams and crabs hanging out near and in the reef. There was such a rich expression of color and life aside from our own that you would not believe. I saw tons of blue starfish and took picture of every one of them because I was always in awe of their royal blue luminance. I had also never seen coral itself up close and I was taken aback by how many there were. Groups of varying sizes and colors stretched along the coast as far as the eye can see. I really felt like I was seeing a planet of sea life different from our own.

A little sea cucumber filtering all of the unwanted dirt from the sand

A beautiful giant clam living in the coral.

Before the swim, Joe asked us to keep a look out for an organism that we really enjoyed and mine was the giant clam or Tridacna gigas.  It is the largest living bivalve mollusk and, like many beautiful species of the sea it is endangered. The clams were my favorite because, though I have eaten quite a few, I’ve never experience the giant clam, which exists in a variety of colors, and some that we saw were as big as my torso. This realization was a humbling experience all its own.  There was an assortment of fish and sea life of all colors and sizes gliding through the water. Some seemed grumpy and nipped at us a little but (which was not painful but very cute) and some were just living, allowing these weird two legged beings without fins to infiltrate their gorgeous home.

At first I was kind of afraid with being so close to the sea life. I was out of my element and thought everything would bite me because I was intruding into their world. I actually came to discover that snorkeling is a great way to see how humans can interact with a different species without disturbing their environment. I was peering through a looking glass into the lives of these residents of the see but they were just existing and going about their daily grind. They weren’t even interested in me for the most part. This experience really made a difference in the way I perceived this environment for the rest of the trip. I felt safe in the sea and that was so different than any comfort I thought I could fathom. I always viewed the sea as this cold, dark unfriendly place but it is a space bustling with life and activity comparable to our own daily habitat. There were so many species of things I had never been able to experience up close. Even if I had experienced these animals in a controlled environment, like an aquarium it is a lot different seeing them uncontrolled and free. In a way, I feel that I’ve gained a sense of freedom because I am not so limited by fear in my exploration of life beyond what I am comfortable. It opened a new world of past and future experiences of diving into water that I wish to welcome with open arms. 

A sea turtle making its way to find some algae among the coral.