Reef Teach

Batfish nearby Passions of Paradise
Originally uploaded by chazjac

May 8
Cairns
Sunny, warm

It is mid-afternoon on the 8th, and I have a little time before I start dinner for my colleague and me. It is a beautiful day here in Cairns, sunny, slightly warm and humid, but with a very stout breeze. I am sitting on the second level patio of the hotel, just watching the palms wave about.

There are so many types of palms that I think I cannot even begin to get them all straight. Of course, there are the ones that produce crops, such as date palms or coconut palms. And there are short ones, tall ones; some have a different leaf structure, like the fan palms; others are characterized by their vines, like rattan... I am sitting at this table looking at two palms. Both have fruits: one has a number of short stalks from which tiny green buds sprout and grow into a red berry; the other has a similar but thicker stalk, and the fruit appears to be a nut that turns from green to a deep red. It might be a date palm, I suppose ...

We have an evening activity, but the day was free, so I spent the morning walking along the Esplanade and taking some photos. I found a few nice blossoms, including the sensitivity plant with its light purple fuzz ball flower. I know little about it, other than that I've seen it here, but do not know if it is native or not. I also got a couple of mudskippers and a crab; I hope they turn out.

Dinner tonight is a pork and vegetable stir-fry with rice. I'll probably throw in some curry powder I bought for a little kick. It is incredibly expensive even to make a meal this simple! The meat was $14/kilo -- that's about $7 per pound. I used the smallest package I could find. Vegetable prices were outrageous, too. But, still, it's no doubt less expensive than what we'd pay to order it in a restaurant.

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Reef Teach is a two-hour evening lecture to which we have brought our students every year we have offered the course. In years past, the lecture was run by an Irish fellow named Paddy, a marine biologist committed to protecting the Reef by educating tourists on how to best prepare for their cruise. Paddy retired and sold the business last year, so our host this time 'round was Natalie. She is not so much older than our students -- I would guess her at about 30 or so -- so the students warmed up to her very quickly.

The lecture itself was as informative as ever: we are introduced via slides and pass-around exhibits to the types of creatures we might find on the Reef: fishes, turtles, sea stars (incorrectly a.k.a. 'star fishes'), octopuses, prawns and shrimp, dolphins, dugongs, and whales. And of course, coral.

Natalie's style is very different from Paddy's. Paddy was sometimes a little over the top in his mannerisms and his sounds, and, while entertaining, these things sometimes got in the way of student learning, as though the show was the thing, not the reef. I never thought that was his intention; he was the same fellow that would be on the Passions of Paradise cruise with us the following day answering additional questions the students would have, the same man who would spend his off-days planting trees along estuaries to help stop agricultural runoff. Natalie's presentation style is more accessible to a crowd like ours, though.

The facility that Reef Teach uses is the fourth one they've occupied. For the first few years of the course, they had a store front on the ground floor of one of the streets just off the Esplanade and across from the casino, a very nice location. Then they moved to a first floor location on the same street; Paddy told me that this was due to an increase in the rent -- sounds like a similar story to what all too often happens to small businesses in America. The new owners occupied a ground-level storefront again for a short time, before moving to this second floor location a few blocks away on Lake Street. We were the first to arrive, and I was afraid that it would be only us, but the lecture room filled up pretty quickly. So, I am hopeful that this is not a business withering away; a lecture like this before we go on the cruise is an important piece of understanding the Reef.