Last week we took one of the smallest planes to one of the smallest islands I have ever seen. The entirety of which could fit in the frame of the window. And it takes about thirty minutes to walk around the whole thing (but more on that later). The island is about the length of the one landing strip with the resort on one side and wilderness on the other. But we did not really spend much time on the island…
Instead we took to the underwater world of the Great Barrier Reef. And I finally got to live out my dreams of being a mermaid! We swam through schools of blue fish and jellyfish. The coral reef itself formed into columns and arches around us. Most of the time I stopped and watched the fish interacting with each other or eating. My favorite was the Parrot fish, which is this large, colorful fish that eats coral. And if I was quite enough I could hear him chomping down on the coral. Or there was the bright blue cleaner wrasse that swam in and out of larger fish eating parasites and sometimes their skin! (Because the cleaner wrasse like to eat the mucus on the skin of the larger fish.)
And then there were the serene sea turtles, which liked to have their shells scratched. Some would even swim up to us, hoping that we would scratch off the algae from their shells. But mostly they were really cute and graceful creatures. They almost seemed to dance through the water.
But the best creature of them all was the sea hare. The sea hare does not look like much, but I think they are cute. His skin camouflages him into the coral and he has two antenni on his head. Another unusual fact about the sea hare is that he has a penis on his head. A lot of the time when they are reproducing the sea hares will form a line of sorts and all have sex together. On one morning snorkel we got to see this happen up close, but there were two groups of sea hares and one lonely sea hare in the middle. We think that he had a hard time choosing which group to be a part of.
But back to the tiny island! As I said, I walked around the other island with Caleb (as we had made it our mission to walk around the island). On beginning the walk we saw something on the horizon that looked somewhat suspicious. Far out in the distance was a glowing, orange blob of…something. After all the strange sea creatures that we had seen, I was sure that this was just some other jellyfish or something of that nature. And the longer we looked at it, the larger it seemed to get. This large orange glowing blob seemed to be approaching us, and I was terrified that the world was ending or something. At one point I said that it might be the moon, but Caleb swore that the moon rose on the other side of the island. We debated about it until finally we just decided to keep walking and find out from Jayna (our professor of the week). But when we got around the island to look at it again it did turn out to be the moon and all that worrying was for nothing. So if ever you come across a glowing blob on the horizon, know that it is only the moon. And not a giant man-eating jellyfish.