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Episode: 1852
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Title: HPR1852: Operation Wallacea
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1852/hpr1852.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-18 10:10:36
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---
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This is HPR Episode 1852 entitled Operation 1Azier, it is hosted by Dave Morris and is about 29 minutes long.
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The summary is, I talk to my daughter about a recent trip to Indonesia.
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This episode of HPR is brought to you by an Honesthost.com.
|
||||
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15, that's HPR15.
|
||||
Better web hosting that's Honest and Fair at An Honesthost.com.
|
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Hello everybody, this is Dave Morris. Today I'm sitting at the kitchen table talking to my daughter Clara.
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It's currently the end of August and the summer vacation is moving towards its close in the UK.
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Soon Clara will be heading back to university for her second year.
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This vacation has been quite an interesting and busy one for Clara.
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I'd like just to talk about what she's been doing because I think it might be her interest.
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So Clara, you were out of the country for several weeks from June this year.
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Where were you and what were you doing?
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Well, I was away for four weeks. I was in an island called Hoga, which is in Indonesia.
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It's part of the Wakitoba natural reserve in Indonesia.
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It's a very hard place to spot if you look for it on a map.
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Yeah, it's really remote.
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Yeah, incredibly and very, very tiny and it's near to the island of Sulawesi.
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Near the Walla Sea Align.
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And Walla Sea is a name given to that region, isn't it?
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Yeah, it was named the Walla Sea Align because it marks a split in biodiversity through Indonesia.
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And it's named after the scientist Alfordresser Walls.
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Right, it was a contemporary of Darwin and a collaborator with Darwin at various points, wasn't it?
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Okay, I find that really quite exciting that that's to exist.
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The company I was working with as well was named Walla Sea.
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It's called Operation Walla Sea because Walla Sea is where Indonesia is where it first started operating.
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It's a company that is a nonprofit organization that works with conservation
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and sort of monitoring biodiversity in very remote areas.
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Right, okay.
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And they have those sort of base of operations out there, don't they?
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Yeah, well they have different projects in lots of different countries.
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Yes, but they have one there in particular.
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Yeah, that's where they started.
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So how did you happen to get involved with this thing then?
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How do you invite it?
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Well, it was a, we had a meeting at the university.
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I think it was a group leader leader sort of event where basically that's someone
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who has previously worked with Operation Walla Sea who wants to go out and do another project with them.
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Right.
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And they basically get all the sort of information and resources from Operation Walla Sea
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then go to university and advertise it.
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And depending on how many people they get to sign up, they get a discount on the next expedition.
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So as they say they get 10 people sign up, that's basically all the expedition paid for.
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Right, right.
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So as I understand it, this Operation Walla Sea is largely funded through having students come out
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and volunteers and everything.
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The students paying to be there is really what's funding their projects.
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I'll be putting a link to their website in the notes for this show.
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So if anybody is interested in going to look for the details there.
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But it required you to get some funding to do this, didn't it?
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Yeah, yeah. They recommend you go out and do fundraising, which didn't exactly work out.
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I didn't have a bit of money but not as much as I hoped to because we had a few people
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and say Andrews who were interested in fundraising but they just didn't,
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like they didn't seem very organised and we didn't really organise any big group events.
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Right, right.
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And there's not a lot of fundraising opportunities and perhaps in a small time like some Andrews.
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It's very difficult and I mean like the only things we were thinking of,
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a few options like selling stuff, like food outside of the library.
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But then there's so much competition from societies from the university to do that sort of thing.
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Right, but you applied for a grant, didn't you?
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Yeah, yeah, that was another thing they recommended you doing.
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So Operation Walla Sea themselves had a grant called the Alpha Russell Walla grant
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inspired by Alpha Russell Walla because he was the person who discovered and named the Walla Sea Align.
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And you had to write about yourself and also write about Alpha Russell Walla and...
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Right, you had to do an essay type of thing.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And then based on that, you either didn't get a grant.
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Yeah.
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And you did.
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I did get a grant.
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Yeah, that was very cool.
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I think probably a bit of politics involved in that because I think they sort of like to pick,
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based on what I've seen for previous years, they like to pick one person each from each university.
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So I think, especially because St Andrews as well as quite a sort of prestigious Scottish university,
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they were like, right, we're going to have one person from St Andrews.
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So I think I like, I didn't really have much competition because there weren't many people from St Andrews who were going.
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Yeah, yeah.
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It was like maybe one or two people other than me.
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So I didn't really have that much competition.
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So it worked out quite well.
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You headed off in June and you were aware that there were going to be a bunch of other people flying out there.
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As well, weren't you?
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Yeah, yeah.
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So how long did it take you to get there?
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You probably can't remember in detail, but just tell us about what sort of trip it was.
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It was a very long journey.
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Very much.
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As well over 30 hours in total as I recall.
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Yeah.
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So there was like about three or four planes I had to take.
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So there was one, I took one trip from Edinburgh to Qatar.
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And then from Qatar to Jakarta and Indonesia.
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And then another plane from Jakarta to Makasa, which is another island in Indonesia.
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And as we went all the planes were getting smaller and smaller.
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That was also in Sulawesi, I think.
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Yeah, each one was about seven hours and second was nine.
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And then the third, I think, was about four hours.
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I can't remember.
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And then we took a plane from Makasa out to Waikatoobi.
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Waikatoobi is the name of an island chain out there.
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It's named after the initial letters of the islands I just got in.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And that was a really small plane.
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Like about a hundred people fit in.
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Yeah, it was quite...
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That journey on that plane took about two hours.
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Right, right.
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That was a little turbo plane.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Okay.
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And then once you've got to the islands, what happened then?
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We sort of landed in land.
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So we got put in cars and taken out to the coast where they had a dock.
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And we went on a boat, a really rickety sort of boat.
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They had like...
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The windows were just sort of open rectangles in the boat.
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And they had to sort of pull up this wooden bit so that the water didn't splash in.
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And they were like, don't sit on the floors because the water will flood in and you'll get wet.
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So sit on top of this like...
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They had a sort of under boat thing to put on luggage in.
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And it had like a top to it.
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So we all had to sort of sit on that.
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All right.
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Keep out of the water that was coming into the boat.
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||||
Yeah, yeah.
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||||
So here above the water level.
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But it made...
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||||
I mean, there's lots and lots of transport around between those islands.
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||||
So whoever was running this obviously did this every day.
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||||
Not every day, every week because that's when we would get new people in.
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||||
But possibly doing it for other people as well, shipping people around between the islands.
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||||
I think that big boat...
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||||
That big boat was specifically for up walls.
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Oh right, okay.
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I think the locals...
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Because it's a very fishing heavy community.
|
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Especially it's very close to an island called Senpel.
|
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Some of you might recognize it because it's famous for being this village out in the ocean.
|
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It's been built out in the ocean.
|
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And the residents of it used to be nomadic fishermen.
|
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And they used to live their whole lives out in the ocean in little boats.
|
||||
And they were pressured by the Indonesian government to settle.
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||||
So yeah, it's a very...
|
||||
The community around the area is very sort of centered around fishing.
|
||||
So a lot of people, all the locals, sort of own the own boat.
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||||
So that's how...
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Usually that's how they travel out.
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Okay, okay.
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||||
That was a...
|
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That was a car with boat Jenny.
|
||||
And we got there.
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And nobody was seeing Sik and hope.
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No, no one threw up.
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No, okay.
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So then you were finally on Hogar Island.
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Yeah.
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And so what was that like once you got there?
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What was your impression of it?
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It's a really lovely place.
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It's very...
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You could imagine it being pictures of it being advertised in like a brochure as like a sort of exotic paradise.
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Yes, yes, it's a paradise island.
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It was kind of...
|
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It was also kind of doing it at the same time.
|
||||
It was like...
|
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It's exciting but dangerous.
|
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Like we got there and we got a big presentation on everything that could kill us.
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That's nice.
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From both animals and the train.
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Yeah.
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Because there were paths had been constructed throughout the island and we were told we can't go past certain points
|
||||
because partly because it was owned by the locals and also because like they didn't have proper paths built there.
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And like we had to...
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Because there were no lights when we went out to our hearts at night.
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We had to carry tortures and we had to stick to the path because if we went off the path you could fall into a coral hole.
|
||||
And that...
|
||||
These big, big, JD Rocky holes.
|
||||
And they were like, yeah, you probably won't find you in there.
|
||||
Or at least you'll get really badly stripped out.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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So...
|
||||
You'll be there all night positive.
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||||
Really somebody finds you or something.
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||||
And there's lots of...
|
||||
Whoa!
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There's commode dragons in there.
|
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Really?
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I don't...
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I don't know.
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I don't know about commode dragons.
|
||||
Okay.
|
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I mean it is...
|
||||
There's the area for them but...
|
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Yeah.
|
||||
Hopefully there's not too many of them stalking around.
|
||||
Wow.
|
||||
I want to watch those guys.
|
||||
And then there were snakes as well.
|
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Yeah.
|
||||
There were a few people who actually saw like...
|
||||
Bigs of hooded cobras.
|
||||
All right.
|
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Wow.
|
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And...
|
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Well, that was just on land and the ocean.
|
||||
There was tons of stuff that coagulated like stonefish.
|
||||
Oh yes.
|
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And...
|
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What do we call the conefish?
|
||||
Cone shells?
|
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Oh yeah, they are called cone shells.
|
||||
Yeah, cone shells.
|
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Because they're venomous shellfish on there.
|
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One of the most venomous creatures.
|
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I think it's the most venomous sea creature.
|
||||
Like they were saying that if you get jowed by them
|
||||
and you had to be careful because the...
|
||||
Like stinger is like...
|
||||
It can extend to twice their body length.
|
||||
But yeah, if you get stung by that, you're dead within half an hour.
|
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So you get stung by that.
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You're doomed.
|
||||
Yeah.
|
||||
You're finished.
|
||||
Stonefish was a bit safer because...
|
||||
I mean you die within five hours but...
|
||||
That might just be enough time to take you to like a hospital.
|
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Which was two hours away by boat.
|
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More than that.
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More than that.
|
||||
Just have to get a boat out and then a plane.
|
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Because the closest hospital was like on Bali.
|
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We were really...
|
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That's a long way.
|
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So there was like no...
|
||||
There was a sort of basic clinic for first aid
|
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and they had a doctor that...
|
||||
You could go to as you were on while anything.
|
||||
But yeah, they couldn't really do much for you.
|
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You've got sick.
|
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Wow.
|
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It's a good thing you made it back.
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Yeah.
|
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Well, we were talking about this.
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Once everyone was very sort of paranoid.
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They were like, oh my god, there's so many things in motion that can kill you.
|
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And we were told that no one had actually died out and it didn't do you yet.
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I don't think anyone...
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They were also warning us about decompression sickness because we were scuba diving.
|
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And they said that no one had had to be like transported away because of decompression sickness.
|
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Right, right.
|
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So no big emergencies.
|
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It's a getting a problem because there's no decompression.
|
||||
But yeah, it was quite concerning.
|
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
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Especially because you saw quite a lot of these creatures.
|
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Yes.
|
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And specifically, I did some...
|
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I'll talk about more detail.
|
||||
But one of the things I did was reef survey techniques.
|
||||
And so they were getting STID invertebrates.
|
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And they were wanting us to find...
|
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They weren't STID specific type of like shell invertebrate.
|
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And they were saying how it looked kind of like a cone shell.
|
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And sometimes mistaken as cone shell.
|
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And they said, you know, if you're turning it over to make sure it's alive
|
||||
because you have to make sure it's alive to tell you it.
|
||||
It can't be.
|
||||
Yeah.
|
||||
Do it with your board or your pencil, like not with your finger.
|
||||
And I was just like, no, I'm not going to touch it.
|
||||
Not counting them.
|
||||
No.
|
||||
So who else was there with you then?
|
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This is quite a busy place, I take it.
|
||||
Yeah, well we had...
|
||||
There were lots of different people, different age groups.
|
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But you had the staff.
|
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The sort of main staff were like scientists, actual scientists or teachers.
|
||||
And that sort of thing.
|
||||
And then you had like the diving masters who varied an age a lot.
|
||||
One of the women specifically who taught me diving was just like a year to older than me.
|
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Yeah.
|
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And then we had the dissertation students who were...
|
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They must have been like fourth year university students who had gone out to do their dissertation in Indonesia.
|
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And they were out for about six weeks.
|
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And then you had the research assistants, which was what I was.
|
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Who are the people who went out to assist the dissertation students.
|
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Very good.
|
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There's also quite a number of people on Hover Island that live there permanently.
|
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Well yeah, we had other than sort of the people in charge or sort of staff.
|
||||
Like the people who were cooking for us.
|
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The people who owned our huts as well because we had landlords.
|
||||
So everyone had a different style of hut.
|
||||
And some people had better landlords and others.
|
||||
There were some that baked people cakes and donuts.
|
||||
And the others like, I never saw my landlord at all.
|
||||
I don't think...
|
||||
I think the first time I saw him in the last time I saw him was when he took us to our hut.
|
||||
And then that was it.
|
||||
Right.
|
||||
Whereas other people were like, it would come in and be like, oh, I do want some cake.
|
||||
My landlord made us cake.
|
||||
And everyone was like, damn you.
|
||||
I was going to ask you what you were doing there.
|
||||
You covered quite a lot of that really.
|
||||
But you weren't able...
|
||||
I did a different thing every week.
|
||||
Yeah.
|
||||
Because what did you start off with?
|
||||
Because you have to get skills first before you can actually do so.
|
||||
I was a research assistant.
|
||||
I was only a research assistant technically for one week.
|
||||
So basically everyone who hadn't done...
|
||||
You know, I didn't have a party certification.
|
||||
And Paddy's the organization that you train with.
|
||||
And you get a certification with to scuba dive.
|
||||
Right.
|
||||
I think there are different organizations you can do it with.
|
||||
But Paddy's one of the sort of universally accepted ones.
|
||||
So you can pretty much go anywhere in the globe and say, oh, we've got a party certification.
|
||||
They go, all right, you can scuba dive.
|
||||
Yeah.
|
||||
So we spent the first week doing that.
|
||||
It was surprising how short that time was.
|
||||
It wasn't even a full week.
|
||||
It was about five days.
|
||||
I think I got my...
|
||||
Yeah, I got my party certification within those five days.
|
||||
It was like we started on...
|
||||
I think it was like we started on Wednesday.
|
||||
And then I finished by Saturday morning.
|
||||
I was the last dive we did and it was like you're done.
|
||||
But there was pretty intensive stuff, wasn't it?
|
||||
Yeah, yeah.
|
||||
It was diving all day, pretty much.
|
||||
Yeah, we were getting up at like five in the morning before the sun had even risen.
|
||||
And getting ready and going out to do theory stuff.
|
||||
And then we'd go out and do diving.
|
||||
And we had like, it was something like you had to do for confined dives,
|
||||
which were usually you do in a pool, but because we didn't have pools.
|
||||
And we had the ocean instead.
|
||||
You got into the ocean.
|
||||
And it would be like I think you had to be within five meters of the surface.
|
||||
And like the first one we did, we were just sort of kneeling down the water.
|
||||
So it sort of gets used to our regulators and that sort of thing.
|
||||
And then we sort of steadily got deeper and deeper down.
|
||||
And it was really interesting because you sort of at the beginning of sort of like,
|
||||
oh god, how am I going to do this?
|
||||
This is really like you think about being underwater like ten meters down.
|
||||
We're just a regulator for your air.
|
||||
And if something goes wrong, you're like,
|
||||
this is really concerning.
|
||||
I don't know if I can deal with this, but then by the end of it, you're just sort of like,
|
||||
yeah, this is fine.
|
||||
I can deal with this.
|
||||
It's good.
|
||||
Yeah, yeah.
|
||||
Getting over that instinctive fear of putting your head under the water and not wanting to
|
||||
breathe because you breathe water in and stuff is quite a difficult thing to master.
|
||||
I mean, I was not by no means an expert because the following week I found like my buoyancy
|
||||
was all over the place.
|
||||
It took everyone was like, it was quite, it was a bit more stressful because we were doing
|
||||
what's called resurvey techniques.
|
||||
And that was basically them training us to be able to ID species, very species on the reef
|
||||
and go out and do this sort of practical survey techniques.
|
||||
Yeah.
|
||||
So things like robustity, which is measuring like how smooth the bed surfaces.
|
||||
Right.
|
||||
So things like we were using quadrats and trans X, yeah, trans X ones and measuring like
|
||||
a number of species within an area and that sort of thing.
|
||||
It was everything from coral, like softened hard coral to invertebrates to fish and all
|
||||
of that sort of stuff.
|
||||
And we did seaweed and sea grasses as well.
|
||||
Yeah, that was quite, it was a bit stressful because they were like, right, you need to go
|
||||
down and do this stuff and you need to maintain your buoyancy because if you don't maintain
|
||||
your buoyancy, you're going to knock into stuff.
|
||||
And we were all like, just sort of flailing and I'm going, yeah, it took me until like half
|
||||
the week to like have my weights right.
|
||||
Because it was like, I think, because your weights are a weird thing and your buoyancy is dependent
|
||||
on how you breathe as well.
|
||||
So I think I was overweighted at the beginning because I was like in the first week we were
|
||||
trying to sit on these like bamboo mats to do various exercises, like taking off our
|
||||
masks and that sort of thing and I could not stay down.
|
||||
I think it was because I was nervous and so I, because I was nervous, like they nervous
|
||||
I wasn't completely relaxed.
|
||||
I hadn't breathed out all the oxygen in my body.
|
||||
So it's like in a swimming pool, like when you breathe out entirely then you can sink
|
||||
but when you breathe in you float up.
|
||||
And it was like, because of that I was overweighted and so I started the first week and I was
|
||||
like sinking and I kept hand to constantly put in my IBCD and then I was like, oh I'm
|
||||
too overweighted and so I took weights away and then I was too underweighted.
|
||||
We had one while we were out to Sampel which luckily wasn't a really biodiverse area
|
||||
because otherwise I would have like, I would have just destroyed a whole bed of coral
|
||||
because I literally just fell to the bottom of the ground and I was like, I can't, I
|
||||
was like the flowing up or I was sinking.
|
||||
It was awful.
|
||||
And the dad messed him up who was with us.
|
||||
He was like, at the end I basically had to just sort of pull you along like a balloon
|
||||
because I just kept looking up.
|
||||
Oh dear, that's, yes, it's a tire string to you and then it's like, yeah, tickle, tickle
|
||||
off everyone to sort of get used to the pointy.
|
||||
Yes, yes of course, but that's what you, that's what you're there for, isn't it, to learn
|
||||
this thing.
|
||||
I mean, luckily I was able to do some snorkeling as well which is really fun.
|
||||
You do, you do sort of, you do that on the reef flat and you sort of duck down and you
|
||||
tuck like the transact under staff and then that was fun, that was really fun.
|
||||
Sounds fantastic.
|
||||
I'm sure a lot of people would be very jealous to hear about your experience, but we also
|
||||
had a test at the end of that week.
|
||||
People were quite frustrated by that.
|
||||
Yes, yes, you said you had an exam.
|
||||
Yeah, because we had to identify all the names of all the different species.
|
||||
There was like about a hundred species or something and we had to, they, they would have
|
||||
sky, the exam was basically, they showed like 40 slides or something and you had to, it
|
||||
would say family or genus or something like that and you had to write down that name.
|
||||
So it was so much memorization.
|
||||
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
||||
And you were covering something new like every single day, so it was really quite stressful,
|
||||
but I passed, I passed first time, so it worked out.
|
||||
So it was, it was not a sort of relaxing holiday.
|
||||
No, no, it was not relaxed.
|
||||
It's still very rewarding.
|
||||
Yeah, I had the third week I did reef monitoring, yeah, I did reef monitoring, which is something
|
||||
they do in operation, but they basically monitor the diversity of different various species
|
||||
in the reef and they use that to determine how healthy the reef is and whether or not it's
|
||||
been damaged over, you know, various years, yeah, and they sort of give it into the
|
||||
government.
|
||||
Okay.
|
||||
And that, you got some, there was some fairly fancy equipment involved in that one, what's
|
||||
that?
|
||||
Yeah, there was a, they used this, like, stereoscopic camera, which was basically like
|
||||
two cameras on the end of like this big stick that people, like one person would swim
|
||||
around down and transact with it and it would monitor the fish and then they put into
|
||||
a program where you, which you could use to measure the fish, it was very finicky, but
|
||||
yeah, we spent, we would wake up really early and go out in two consecutive dives, which
|
||||
was really tiring.
|
||||
It's very exhausting.
|
||||
You had to go on a dive at seven and then come back, get all your gear off and then you'd
|
||||
have about half an hour to rest and then you have to set all your gear back up and then
|
||||
go out again, capturing this stuff and then after that you'd have a bit of a break for
|
||||
lunch and maybe enough time to go and have like a Mandy, which is what, how we bathed,
|
||||
which was basically a bucket of water, like we see, and then we had like a sort of smaller
|
||||
pale that you sort of picked up with the water over you, so we had no running water.
|
||||
So that was, I mean, we had a, no, no, we didn't have any running water.
|
||||
I mean, yeah, no, no, I don't know what I'm thinking, no, no, no, no, no, I don't think
|
||||
we had running water anyway, because I was just thinking of, do we have taps and no,
|
||||
we didn't, we had a bucket that you just poured water onto your hands.
|
||||
A well somewhere, maybe, isn't it?
|
||||
Well, they brought in on the ship.
|
||||
All right, all right.
|
||||
Because there is no freshwater on the island itself, because, no, just rent, but it's
|
||||
yeah, yeah, and it's on some sort of coral, old coral base, isn't it?
|
||||
It's, it's whatever you call that when an island forms over the top of the coral.
|
||||
So after lunch, we'd go to the lab and we'd do, we'd sort of, they'd have filmed like
|
||||
transit lines and we'd sort of stop the video every sort of half a meter and you'd write
|
||||
down what was there, so like rock or sand or whatever species of coral or whatever was
|
||||
there.
|
||||
And all we'd do in this sort of fish videos, and that was for a week.
|
||||
And then the last week, the last week I was a research assistant and it was quite, that
|
||||
was quite a busy week as well.
|
||||
I was in the water at least three times a day, because that was making two research assistants
|
||||
at that point, because everyone else who had done like training with me had gone off
|
||||
to do something called the culture course, which is why you went around the surrounding
|
||||
islands and sort of got an idea of, you know, you sort of experience the culture and
|
||||
that sort of things and they went to some pillar and met people there and what to see what
|
||||
the lifestyle was like.
|
||||
And that was an interesting, that was, it sounded really interesting and I think I would
|
||||
have done it if I had more time, but being from like, with my mum being from Indonesia,
|
||||
I've had a lot of experience with Indonesian culture, so there was a lot of stuff that people
|
||||
were surprised by that I was like, oh yeah, that's Indonesia, like the whole, like the neglect
|
||||
incidents of rubbish, like they just throw out, like there was one girl who was saying
|
||||
he was really shocked because she'd found that her landlord just basically would grab
|
||||
the rubbish and just throw it down a coral hole and she was like, this is, this is, how
|
||||
can they do this?
|
||||
This is, like they're ruining the island and they live on and I was like, yeah, that's
|
||||
something Indonesia, because it's the sort of, they don't really know how to deal with
|
||||
this stuff.
|
||||
No, it's, it's, it's a gradual process to get people into, they've got this specific culture
|
||||
and then all this new stuff to be introduced, they don't really know how to integrate
|
||||
that properly.
|
||||
No, no.
|
||||
We'll deal with it.
|
||||
Yeah, it's part of what, what operation, while the series is helping us, they try and
|
||||
educate the population.
|
||||
And also the Indonesian government's quite strong on this sort of becoming so, I wanted
|
||||
to, to preserve these sort of places.
|
||||
Yeah, I decided that because I went there to be a research assistant, I wanted to do
|
||||
at least one week of research assistant work.
|
||||
Yeah.
|
||||
I mostly snorkeling because there weren't many people who were willing to snorkel, so
|
||||
I was mostly snorkeling.
|
||||
I was working with a girl who was sort of serving fish part of us tea in the seagrass,
|
||||
which was really interesting.
|
||||
I've never, I've not really been out there that much.
|
||||
So it was really, it was really cool to sort of see sort of stuff in the seagrass and I
|
||||
did various other things.
|
||||
I would have, I think if I could go back, I would have stayed another two weeks at least
|
||||
because it was really, it was really enjoyable and there was sort of stuff I could have
|
||||
done.
|
||||
You just schooled, you got your school level up and you could have to leave.
|
||||
And I got my endurance up as well, like it was so, I think by the end of the third week,
|
||||
I'd gone past the point where everything was exhausting and like I'd built my sort of
|
||||
strength and endurance enough that everything was much more, it was more like rewarding.
|
||||
You didn't come out feeling exhausted, you sort of felt that sort of physical exhaustion
|
||||
that sort of makes you feel excited and you know, wanting to do more of it.
|
||||
Yeah, yeah, the length of time was satisfied, I guess you'd say.
|
||||
Yeah, we had to decide on the length of time beforehand and it was sort of decided on
|
||||
the basis of...
|
||||
Well, originally I had planned six weeks, but like I had, because when I was sick during
|
||||
the first semester of my first year, I'd missed an exam and it'd been deferred to August
|
||||
and because it was one of my, it wasn't my biology, when it was my earth science subject
|
||||
which I was less familiar with, I thought I needed extra time to study, I didn't want
|
||||
it, and I wanted a bit of opportunity to have a bit of a break and then study, why
|
||||
is if I did six weeks, I feel like I'd have to come back and just study for a way.
|
||||
Yeah.
|
||||
Yeah, it's shame, but there you go.
|
||||
What can you do?
|
||||
Yeah.
|
||||
Let's just finish off by asking you a couple of questions.
|
||||
What do you actually feel you gained from doing this?
|
||||
Well, I think, well, I mean, it was just a wonderful experience because I got to meet
|
||||
all of the interesting people, but I also got to see the reefs and the amount of, there
|
||||
were some really beautiful areas out there that were just lovely and biodiverse and I've
|
||||
never seen anything like that with my own eyes before and it was just a really wonderful
|
||||
experience.
|
||||
As a biologist, then that was, that was...
|
||||
And of course, I like how to identify stuff as well, so I could go, oh, that's a, that's
|
||||
a parrot patient, that's a butterfly patient, I don't know what that species is called.
|
||||
And you've got to go and, do you tell me you went to Mangrove area?
|
||||
Yeah, we did that at the end of the research assistant work, which was not the research assistant,
|
||||
the reef survey techniques, because they wanted us to, I mean, that was the only time I
|
||||
went there, but because we were researching the sea grasses at that point, that was a good
|
||||
area to go out to and that was really interesting.
|
||||
We were just snorkeling with no weights or anything like that, so you were just floating
|
||||
on the surface because the bed of the Mangrove was like a few meters away, like two meters
|
||||
away from you.
|
||||
And you had all these upside-down jellyfish and stuff, it was really beautiful and amazing.
|
||||
Man, I didn't know anything about that.
|
||||
I mean, of course, I also like how to goo a dive, which I can, I can do...
|
||||
Of course you do.
|
||||
How much of the gear now as well, except for the BCD and the air tanks?
|
||||
What's a BCD, by the way?
|
||||
It's true.
|
||||
I think it sounds like a buoyancy control device, it's basically this big sort of, it's kind
|
||||
of like a jacket, but it's, it's the thing that inflates or deflates to a buoyancy.
|
||||
Okay, all right.
|
||||
So I don't know anything about that.
|
||||
And then your regs are like your, your regularly, which is what you breathe through and also
|
||||
you have your main reg and your secondary reg for emergencies or if your body is out of
|
||||
oxygen.
|
||||
And then you have like a, and then you have a bit that clips into your BCD, and that's
|
||||
where you get the air form, and then you get like a, your SPG, which is a thing that tells
|
||||
you how much air you've got, like, to know what depth you are at.
|
||||
Yeah.
|
||||
Yeah, okay.
|
||||
I'll put that down.
|
||||
Yeah, that was really good.
|
||||
Like I want to do more diving.
|
||||
Yeah.
|
||||
I think if I ever go out to Indonesia again on holiday, I want to, I want to do a diving.
|
||||
Do do some, do some proper diving there.
|
||||
So yeah, well, that leads me to my last question, which is, would you do this again if you
|
||||
got the chance?
|
||||
Yeah, I think I would, problem right now is that I, like I probably want to go out and
|
||||
do some proper research, assistant work, you know, a specific project, because that's
|
||||
the sort of thing, companies, I don't know, companies and organizations expect you to have
|
||||
when you're CVS are biologists.
|
||||
Yes.
|
||||
So I probably have to go out and do that, you know, so I don't want to spend, it was
|
||||
quite an expensive trip and I don't want to have to spend that much money.
|
||||
I think if I do do, like, something with operation, I'll see you again, I'll do the group lead
|
||||
I think, because that was something we were offered to do, um, I'll, I'll do the lead
|
||||
I deal and try and recruit people to go in expedition.
|
||||
I don't know if I do an ocean one again, I might, but one of the ones that interested
|
||||
me the most was the terrestrial one out in Africa, or you basically live out in the
|
||||
savannah and Hudson stuff, not Hudson tents, and like you're literally on the savannah,
|
||||
so they have like, there was line proof fences around the campsite, and you go out into
|
||||
the savannah and they were saying how it's quite dangerous, it can be quite dangerous
|
||||
work, because you can actually have like face-to-face encounters with wildlife, and you
|
||||
get taught specific ways to avoid them, we'll have to deal with them and you have to,
|
||||
you know, it's quite stringent, but it's very rewarding, and I'd like to, so I think
|
||||
it's in, it's another extreme, you know, I've, I've sort of experienced the, the sort
|
||||
of marine biology side, but I kind of want to experience that sort of very, you know,
|
||||
Africa is a good place to experience, yeah, very cool, very cool, very cool, well I hope
|
||||
that comes, uh, comes to be, we'll have to see, anyway, hopefully I'll, hopefully I'll
|
||||
have time on some holiday or something, alright, let's, let's, let's call a halt at that
|
||||
point, thanks very much Clara, and hope everybody enjoyed hearing about your experience, okay,
|
||||
bye then.
|
||||
You've been listening to HackerPublicRadio at HackerPublicRadio.org, we are a community podcast
|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user