Day 8: Tuesday, February 12, 2002
More Heron Island activities

Ellen & Walendo in semi-sub

Today our plan was to go on the morning snorkel boat and then chill out in the afternoon, but even though we went to sign up for the boat first thing, it was all full. What a shame. Instead, we signed up for snorkeling tomorrow morning and in the meantime signed up for that morning's semi-submersible (AU$30, US$15), which is a glass bottom boat. Walendo had spoken to a couple who had gone and said it was worthwhile, so we figured we'd try it out. Adrianna joined us for breakfast, which was nice. She had signed up for snorkeling in time, so I think Gordon was especially bummed we didn't make it. Oh well.

Sea turtle from semi-sub

The semi-sub did turn out to be a good thing. The boat just meanders around the reef with the coral pretty close down below us. The water is a little harder to see through than when you're snorkeling, but you can still get a pretty good look. Justine was our guide, and she sat at the front of the boat checking out what was coming and she gave a running commentary on what we were seeing. That was nice to learn a little about some of the things we'd seen snorkeling, plus we saw new stuff. We finally saw a large turtle, several in fact. A few times we came up right close and Gordon and I were able to get nice pictures. We also saw several large Eagle Rays, they seem to hang out right by the dock.

Giant grouper. (Fish near its mouth are "normal sized")

Another time a school of medium-sized Strawberry fish? swam right along side us, as if we were just another fish in the school. That was cool. At one point, we saw this gigantic Queensland Grouper, which Justine said weighed about 300 pounds! She was very excited about seeing it, since the had lost track of it since before Christmas and they were worried about it. It was clearly a highlight of her day. She focused mainly on the fish but also told us more about the coral. I took about a thousand pictures, many of which will just look like murky blue water, but what the hell. The whole thing went for about an hour, which seemed like a good amount of time. Again, worth the money.

Coral & fish from semi-sub

After the semi-sub, we sat at the pool area for a while before lunch. I went and got the laptop and uploaded the pictures from the camera so we could all see them. That was really cool to be able to check them out. Then Gordon showed us his from his camera, and he had some really nice shots from the semi-sub and of the resort in general. I wanted to get some of his shots, so we just put his compact flash into our reader and uploaded the ones we wanted onto my laptop. What a great way to share pictures! I spent some time labelling them all. (I wish there were better software for that.)

Adriana, Gordon & Ellen at Gordon's last lunch

Soon enough, it was time for lunch. Today was Gordon's last day, so he had to leave right after lunch. Again, Adrianna joined us. (They have a singles table and I would imagine that's less comfortable that sitting with a small group, or maybe she liked hanging out with us.) While we were sitting there, Walendo noticed that the people at the table next were wearing Samba t-shirts and one of them had a big laptop, which struck him as a geeky thing to do. Since he knows that the author of Samba, Andrew Tridgell, is Australian, he thought it might be him. He went over to meet them, mainly thinking he'd thank them if they worked for Samba (Linux freeware that we use to gain access to our Linux server data from our Windows desktops), and if it turned out to be Tridgell, that'd be so much the better. Well, it turned out that it was Tridgell, plus another co-author, Jeremy Alison, along with Andrew's wife, Susan. They were very friendly, and they seemed pleased that Walendo wanted to thank them for the work they'd done. It was a nice encounter.

Gordon leaving Heron Island

We lingered at lunch as long as we could. At one point we talked about how we had all the talent for a startup, if only we had a product idea. But we came up with a name — Heron Technologies. Gordon had to be at the jetty by 2pm to catch the boat, so just before that we headed over. When Gordon picked up his briefcase, he grabbed his business card and gave it to Adrianna and asked her to write her email address on one for him. Way to go Gordon. The new crew of people were just being walked to the reception area, so he got there just in time. Adrianna came with us to say goodbye to Gordon, which was very nice. It was sad saying goodbye to Gordon, and knowing we'd be on the boat the next day. We stayed and waved as the boat took off. Sigh.

Turtle hatchling makes it past footprint

After that, we split up and Walendo and I hung out near the pool reading and such. At 3pm, we went to the Turtle Talk, which was again led by Justine. (We seemed to be on her circuit.) It was a slide show and an educational talk about the turtles, which was great, since we'd been seeing them on the beach. She showed us a green turtle and a loggerhead (green turtles are much more common) and a third kind I didn't catch that is not on this island. She described the breeding patterns. The saddest thing is that the mom lays about 180 eggs per batch and yet only 1 in 1,000 hatchlings make it to adulthood, so most of the time, all her efforts are in vain. Most of them are eaten by birds or by small sharks that hang out by the water's edge waiting for the hatchlings. (We had seen one the night before.) She lays eggs I think twice per season, so she takes a few shots at it. One interesting thing is that during mating season she mates with a number of different male turtles and keeps the sperm inside her. When she's ready, she uses sperm from different males to fertilize the eggs, keeping some back for the next batch that season. I guess this adds to the variety, which increases the chances of survival. (The sperm are viable for about a month.)

Heron Island pool area

The turtles live to be about 180 years old (they think), and they don't become sexually mature until they're 30 years old. Once they're grown, they're generally pretty safe, but very few survive. How sad. She also explained why it's so important to let the turtles along when they're hatching. They think that when they walk down the beach, they're leaving a magnetic imprint so they can find that beach again later. They come back to lay eggs there, 50 years after they hatch. So when people pick up the turtles and walk them to the water, they interfere with that process, and of course it'll take 50 years to learn how that affects them. Also, the birds and sharks need to eat too, so we should let them eat them. I wish everyone would listen to her and just let them be.

After the talk, Walendo decided to hang out at the pool area and write postcards. I went to take a shower and then went off to my massage. (They offer them at the resort for AU$70 (US$35), which is quite a bargain.) The massage was delicious. So relaxing. It's surprising how nice it feels to have your feet massaged. I decided that I would do that for Walendo after we've been walking for a while. Maybe he'll be more willing to go for walks. :-) Much too soon, the massage was over.

Noddy Terns in tree

It was now around 6pm and I wanted to go out with the good camera to get some pictures when the light was nice. First I took some shots of the noddy terns right outside our balcony, and then I walked out to the beach and discovered that there were lots of hatchlings. It seemed early, so I wasn't expecting that, but it was a treat. There were a couple of very slow ones that were struggling to make it, which was sad but it allowed me time to get the shots I wanted. After a bit, someone noticed a huge batch of hatchlings all coming out of a hole above the beach at the same time.

Many turtles hatching at once

There were dozens of them, all squiggling their way out of the hole and down the beach. Wow! Of course my tripod wasn't at the right height so I had to scramble but I think I got some. (It's tough to get those shots when I have to worry about exposure, shutter speed, focus and zoom all at once — the camera doesn't deal with sand very well so sometimes I had to manually focus. I also had Velvia in the camera and the light was getting low, so I couldn't get the long depth of field I wanted at times, but we'll see.) By now I'd shot about two rolls of birds and turtles. I continued along the beach and took some more bird shots and then a few shots of the trees with multiple leg branches and whatever else I saw. I didn't feel that inspired for some reason, but I was glad I went out.

Turtle with tracks

I got back around 7:30 and Walendo and I went off to dinner. Again it was a menu-style dinner. After a little while Adrianna joined us again, so I was glad she felt comfortable. (She always asked if we wanted to be alone, but we made sure she knew we were happy for the company.) They had Asian style fish cakes (pad mon) so Walendo was psyched. Walendo wanted to do something nice for the Samba guys, so he told the waiter that if they ordered drinks, to put them on our tab. They arrived a little later and indeed they ordered drinks. When they arrived, the waiter told us that we'd picked up the tab and they seemed genuinely pleased. Andrew said that had never happened to him before. Jeremey said to Walendo that the beer was great but he also wanted bug reports, which Walendo said he'd be happy to send them. That's great. Andrew had brought his laptop again and they were looking at pictures of their night dive, so he offered to show us. It was pretty cool to see the night shots. Different coral comes out at night, plus he got some shots of fish we hadn't seen. He also got some nice turtle shots. Very nice of him to show us.

After that we ate and chatted with Adrianna. I asked her about dating in New York, if there's really a shortage of men (hard to imagine in the Bay Area) and she said there was. She'd used match.com a bunch so I was interested to hear her experiences with that. Sounds like she met some nice people but just not the right one. We also talked about biz dev and how that worked. Walendo is always amazed at the idea that a biz dev person can just pick up the phone and call another biz dev person and get a meeting to make a deal. So we did a little shop talk, but it was okay, we hadn't been thinking about that in a while.

Somehow we didn't leave dinner till about 10pm. We're leaving tomorrow, so we wanted to do laundry tonight. There was a laundry room right by our room, which was nice, but it was a little slow so it took a while. We packed as best we could as the clothes were done, but didn't get to bed till after midnight.

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