Standing By to Standby

Still on standby here at the condos, waiting for the 48 blasting notice from the company contracted to do the dredging. We’re told that the first blast will commence on Monday, so we will be expecting a call sometime today. Our plan today is to work out some of the kinks in the Cyclopes program so it will be functional before the blast date. This will be my job, since I’m the only person out of the team of 5 that has experience with the program, even though I only used it a few times during Straddie (it’s not my favorite program). Basically Cyclopes is a mapping program similar to GIS but not as sophisticated. It was designed to track the movements of whales, but we are mortifying it for our purposes to follow all marine fauna that’s sighted.

To start off, I’ll enter the GPS coordinates of the blast sight given by the dredging boat. From there we will attempt to use a new feature in Cyclopes that displays buffer rings at set distances around a position (although it currently isn’t working properly). An hour before the blast we will start our fauna observations using special binoculars with a compass and reticule marks in the field of view. The observer will then call out the position and reticule (used to estimate distance) of a sighting so I can plot it in Cyclopes. If the sighing is within the buffer of the blast site (1150 meters for all fauna and 2000 meter for marine mammals) we will call off operations until the sighting is clear of the area. So it’s important that I figure out how to fix the damn program before Monday. And you thought I was the lucky one who gets paid to watch the ocean (not the case here).

I’m having Dave send me to Cairns for my first 10 days off. Cairns is maybe a 2 hour flight north of Mackay, where the Great Barrier Reef creeps closer to the mainland, making it more assessable for day trips. There is also a really nice rainforest nearby with heaps of birds, snakes, cocodrillos (crocodiles in Spanish) and everything else new and exciting. I have a friend from the Straddie project who’s working on a snorkeling boat as a naturalist, so I hope to jump onto the boat with her for a few days and check out the reef. I’d like to go on a dive too, but I haven’t dived in so long I’m a little apprehensive. I’ll be leaving Mackay on Friday the 13th (not the best day to fly) and will come back here on the 23rd when my second swing starts for another 10 days. Once the second swing is over I’ll fly back to Brisbane to surf for a few days on the Gold Coast before preparations start for the HARC project.

It is not very stimulating setting in a white walled hotel room on standby, but at least it offers some time to organize my photos (which I’ve been avoiding for the past 3 years now) and getting some reading done (everyone should go out and get the book Kon Tiki if you haven’t read it already). I have been getting some birding in while driving to and from the coal terminal. There are Rainbow Lorikeets everywhere, as with the Kookaburras. According to the bird book another species of Kookaburra, the Blue Winged, is possible this far north, but I have yet to see it. I spotted 2 huge Cockatoos (I think the red winged variety) in the gum trees of the coal terminal parking lot. It’s strange to see such a beautiful tropical scene and its wildlife surrounding a sooty black forest of steal and coal. It’s like a festering wound in the landscape. Tomorrow we plan to take a drive to one of the coal mining sites an hour west of here, which should be a real eye opener.