I decided the best part about going to Bruno’s farm on Friday was his mother being so hospitable. Bruno made us nachos with homemade chili and tons of cheese melted on top, but his mom made us vegetable samosas, kept offering us tea and coffee, and even put out pita with hummus, some kind of new Zealand cheese, brie cheese, and cucumbers. She was so nice and so welcoming, it was truly great to be in someone’s home after living in a dorm for so long. I think I’m going back over there during spring break. I commented how much I liked the cranberry, raspberry, and elderberry tea that I was drinking so she gave me a brand new box of it!
Today we changed our clocks forward an hour (spring ahead here), so now I’m 16 hours difference from Connecticut. Since I’ve been here it’s gone from 18 hours time difference to 17, and now 16! As soon as I get used to one time difference it changes again.
So Friday night we went out and had some fun, getting back pretty late, but I had to get up at 5:30 to hop on a 20-seater bus for a ride up to Leigh, where we went to the Leigh Marine Lab. It’s right next to Goat Island Marine Reserve, which is very popular with snorkelers, divers, and glass bottom boats.
We spent Saturday measuring nutrient uptake rates by different types of brown algae. It was really neat to work with some species local to New Zealand, and my group was awesome at being efficient and getting the job done. We finished so early that we had time to go snorkeling! We headed down to the rocky beach (which has amazing tiny cliffs with trees hanging on them, looking like they could fall down at any point- see picture!) which turns to sand a little way into the water. I’ve never been to a beach this rocky before, where it looks like the water just carved a path through the rocks and is still working on weathering down other parts of the rocks. Goat Island is a short swim out of the main island. We swam out to the island and saw big snapper (maybe 2-3 feet long) along with goat fish (the red and white fish with two “feelers” coming off of its face in the Bay of Islands pictures) and lots of other things. It’s neat to swim between the kelp and check out what’s under all the rocks. The visibility wasn’t as great as I was hoping, but that’s because I’m usually diving, where we get away from all of the runoff from the land. It’s a great family place because it’s relatively shallow and there’s heaps (Kiwi saying!) of awesome tide pools to check out.
Today we spent the day surveying the animals that live in the intertidal zone, like in the tide pools and such. It’s really neat to compare the NZ animals to the New England ones, because we did a similar survey (actually, the same exact thing) at the rocky intertidal zone of Bluff Point in Groton, CT for my Coastal Systems Science II class. It’s neat because most of the animals are different, and there are small fish, shrimp, and sea stars in some of the rock pools.
I got to know some more of the kids in my class better, including one of the kids that was showing us his parkour skills. Parkour is a worldwide sport where you learn how to jump over things of various heights, climb fences as fast as possible, and do some really neat things in a city setting. He can also climb around a dining room table—by this I mean the underside of it—without once touching the ground. It was SO cool to watch!
Overall, a really good weekend, getting to know the New Zealand coastline a bit more!
Please note, I included some pictures from Friday and some from the marine lab!
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