Monday, July 9, 2012

The Octopus in Tasmania

Last week was the combined New Zealand/Australia Marine Sciences conference in Hobart, Tasmania. Heather, the octopus and I flew over for the week to enjoy multitude of amazing speakers, and to present our own research to the scientific community.
Hobart is a harbourside city on the southern tip of Tasmania. (So in the middle of winter, it's a bit chilly). It prides itself on it's Seafood, and there were many floating fish and chipery boats in the main harbour. We also made a new friend in "Jeremy" the Pufferfish, who was lazily swimming around the harbour. Hobart is also a very historical city. It is situated at the base of Mt. Wellington, so it's a bit hilly, but makes for a very picturesque hillside. Many of the important buildings in Hobart are made of the original sandstone, which makes everything look like it's from a different era.
The conference was held at the Wrest Point hotel, but we stayed in the Pickled frog Hostel, which was about a 10 minute bus ride away. The conference center was located right on the water, which was great because we had amazing, sunny weather the whole time. We woke up fairly early in the morning, and caught a bus to the conference. Every day we had several keynote speakers to get our minds working. We would then break for morning tea, before heading off to a day of presentations. Most of these were given by students, like myself, or researchers at other institutions. The topics ranged from whales and dolphins, corals, ocean warming, pollution, deep-sea food chains, and of course SQUID (which was totally the most interesting topic).
At the end of the week, we had a gala dinner, which included a three course meal, a live band, marine themed decorations, and dancing. It was a great way to finish off an engaging (but exhasuting) week.
My only regret was not being able to see any live Tasmanian devils!