MY LIFE IS SO AWESOME.

Jelly Fish suits. So cute.

The last two days have been so awesome!! Probably two of the best days of my life actually. Yesterday we spent all day on a huge catamaran stopping to snorkel all across the Great Barrier Reef and it was amazing! I saw a dolphin, a shark, a turtle, a baby sting ray, and a ton of super colorful  fish, more colorful than I thought we be even possible. It was really nice hot weather outside too so it was perfect for swimming (and tanning on the deck in between stops). Afterwards, a marine biologist came and talked to us about the damage being done to the Reef and other issues with boating laws and although climate change and human contact are the main issues, I learned a few new things about marine laws that really shocked me. For instance, in certain international waters you cant practically dump ANYTHING into the water, including trash and human waste. We also learned that the company that owns the reef tour company we traveled with yesterday dumps all of their human waste into the ocean. I wouldn’t think that pure human waste would be extremely harmful to the ocean on its own but the fact that most sewage is treated, and not everything that is flushed down the toilet is pure human waste, the fact that this is all dumped into the ocean is just gross. The fact that you can dump pure trash into the ocean in some areas is even more ridiculous. I don’t consider myself to be a super eco friendly person, I recycle most of my stuff and am pretty conscious about how much water I use, but that’s about it and even I would never think that dumping whatever you want or dumping sewage into the ocean consciously would be a good idea that wouldn’t cause problems in the future. Whoever looked over these laws and didn’t think this would be an issue is a pretty big idiot.

Aboriginal James Bond pose.

Today was an even better day! We went to the Aboriginal Cultural Center and learned a little about how the tribe came about which was interesting. We learned how a digeridoo is made and played but the MOST FUN OF ALL was getting to throw spears and boomerangs! So fun. I was okay at throwing the spear, not so great at the boomerang but I bought one to take home and I am determined to master it out on Foss field at school.

   

I wish I could have both of these as pets.

One of my life goals was to pet a Koala, a Kangaroo, and a Wallaby, all of which I accomplished today! On top of that I got to feed them all and I even got to pet a crocodile and feed a bird that was a cross between a turkey and an ostrich (a cassoway I think they were called?) We went on a short boat ride around the manmade crocodile swamp and watched our boat driver feed a massive crocodile a piece of chicken (picture shown below) So awesome! Apparently crocodiles have the strongest set of jaws of any animal, something like 3,000 ibs of force with one bite. Crazy! Anyways, today was incredible and these past two days have been so great I can barely even begin to describe them with words.