Raine Island - Nature's Cradle on the Edge of the Coral Sea
Satellite Web Cast From Turtle Heaven and Hell
Journal Entry - 11- 30 - 02 - Lizard Island .....The Great Barrier Reef
We awoke at this desert resort island having arrived at 2 am. The tags are on the 10:00 resort plane. After a brief scare that the airport porters union won't make the effort to move the freight bags over to the necessary terminal- it is too early for them start work. But then Richard's sat. phone rings fast and furiously - all is well. A bit of breakfast and Richard Fitzpatrick, principal cinematographer, on the documentary, jumps in the water and swims to shore for the quick walk up to the air strip. Lizard Island is well known for its annual marlin fishing tournament and a marine research station located on the island. When he swims back to the boat there are cheers all around. The yellow waterproof bag he has with him holds the tags and several other small packages. We will be able to tag turtle and sharks with these small tags which record depth, time and temperature.
Before breakfast, though, Richard's satellite phone goes in to use. He places a call to the Undersea Explorer, a dive charter/research boat he collaborates with, which is anchored well to the North between us and Raine. They have located a rare scorpion fish, schooling manta rays and nesting yellow margined trigger fish which are famous for their extremely aggressive territorial behavior when nesting. They actually attack and draw blood from divers who approach too closely too quickly. The plan is to motor up to a reef named Mantis reef to film the trigger fish and hopefully find the scorpion fish. All of these will make rich material for the documentary.
Leaving Lizard Island the Floreat skippers have decided to shoot outside the reef for a quicker passage up to Raine Island. While this can only be done when the weather allows, photographically the benefits can be significant as well in that as you make passage into the Coral Sea - really the Pacific Ocean - chances increase considerably of encountering large pelagic marine animals. So, as soon as we left Lizard there was a rush to prepare blue water, big animal camera rigs in preparation for the chance encounter. Having made the necessary preparations, of course, guaranteed that we met none of the whale sharks, sperm whales or humpback whales others have encountered but if you're not ready you have no chance at all of getting the shot. We did manage to catch two fish: a bonito tuna and a barracuda, the barracuda just outside the reef passage and the bonito in the 6000 foot deep of the Pacific Ocean.
As the sun sets, we continue motoring NorthEast into the night. Again we will reach our anchorage in the very early morning. We can't arrive too early as the passage into the reef anchorage is treacherous so we have actually slowed down. We are aiming to arrive just at sunrise and knowing our skippers from the two weeks I spent with them in early August I am confident that is when we will arrive. We will spend half a day there and then motor on to Raine Island. Tomorrow afternoon the wait will be over we will be at Raine. They say you can smell the island from a mile away this time of year....between the birds and dead turtles. We'll see.
Tomorrow - the first digital and film underwater photography of the trip...... The fun begins

And you will be there...
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Photo Captions:
• The tags reach the boat in their waterproof bag.
• Leaving Lizard Island behind and heading for the Coral Sea and the open Pacific Ocean
• Jamie Seymour, box jellyfish expert, the first to use tracking tags on jellyfish , who will supervise the use of the tags inspects them. They were his responsibility as they sat "lost" in Sydney for a week.
• Gordon, one of our skippers wisely, handles a struggling barracuda with care.