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Jacob Milea
My Australia Experience:
As a SUNY ESF undergraduate student, I had the wonderful opportunity to travel to Australia in order to do 25 days of independent biology research with Dr. Bill Shields. The research and experiences I brought back from this trip are very similar in nature to not only the interests of Dr.Mark Teece, but to the research I will be conducting as a graduate student.
 
One of my favorite pictures from Herron Island. Herron Island is a coral reef cay that is made from two sources; dead coral being continually washed onto shore and this continuous cycling degrading it and parrot fish, which are brightly colored fish that you will see in numerous other pictures, eating the coral, grinding it very finely and then excreting it into the water.?
In this picture you can see the rock wall on the right being exposed due to low tide, in the horizon you see the barrier reef and on the left a large piece of drift wood has been washed up onto shore.
 
I became SCUBA dive certified my sophomore year in college. This training allowed me to dive the Great Barrier Reef on two consecutive days while in Australia. This training will be very useful for my graduate research as well. That’s me on the right and Mrs. Meghan Gerson on the left.
The Great Barrier Reef is a unique entity that is not only encapsulated by enormous reef walls and shelves. There are smaller pieces of the GBR that are alive and visible at depths of less than feet. I took a picture of this pink/purple coral through the water and it still came out this vivid and clear (minus the wave ripples).
Here I was able to observe the mutualistic relationship between a clown fish and a sea anenome.
 
The diversity in coral is unbelievable. The predominant species seen in this picture is staghorn coral…those are the ones that kind of look like deer antlers
The brightly colored parrot fish caught in the act of aiding to the formation of the coral cay known as Heron Island. It’s a strange phenomenon when you are underwater and all you hear is this crunching noise…it’s the parrot fish chewing on the coral! Sound travels ~25 times faster underwater than in air, so it is surprisingly loud at depth.
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