Backblog
I've been poor at updating my jounal recently, not due to lack of things to write about, but instead due to plans to impove a number of 'half-finished' entries I have floating around unpublished. However due to a lack of round tuits, I'm posting these wholesale, without much in the way of additional editing. There'll be one or two each day until I catch up. Apologies for anything that's out of order.

Diving - Days 2-3 (Jan 2007)
One of the biggest features of our last trip was a visit to Hoskin Island lagoon, and I was pleased to discover that this experience was scheduled for this trip as well. Getting to the lagoon was a bit difficult, as we were dropped off in a tough location, and had to make our way over shallow coral to the island. Lots of people came back with some very nasty coral scratches, although I seem to have been fortunate in this regard.

The lagoon was beautiful! Lots of turtles, reef-sharks, a hermit crab, a crayfish, and a very large, very well camoflagued tear-drop shaped fish, which we late identified as a toadfish. After so much diving the snorkling was very relaxing: no need to worry about air or buoyancy or ascent rates or bulky gear. We saw a few crown of thorns starfish, which are responsible for large amounts of coral bleaching, but they were small, and the only ones spotted this trip.

Like our trip a few years ago, I feel bad about the damage that I know we're causing to the reef. Sure, there's the occasional impact between fins and coral, but the biggest damage is done by the ship itself. Dropping an anchor is an imprecise art, and often the anchor or the chain will damage coral. The bigger the ship, the bigger the anchor, and the greater the damage.

Some sites we visited had a significant patch of dead and broken coral, presumably from repeated anchoring. In the Whitsundays the most heavily dived sites have strict restrictions and boats must be moored to floating buoys rather than dropping anchor. The reef tax we pay goes into establishing more of these (and other reef management initiatives), but unfortunately there are none in the bunker group yet.