Hōkūleʻa Update | June 14, 2015

Aloha everyone, this is Kaniela Lyman-Mersereau reporting for the Worldwide Voyage. Here we are in Townsville, Australia at the Australian Institute for Marine Science. This place is massive and is filled with research laboratories all dedicated to marine science and exploration on the coral reef. And it is very humbling, really, seeing all of the different things that these scientists are doing for the oceans and climate that surround this place. So we’ve learned hundreds of things as we walked around. We can see different ways they are researching the coral reefs and helping those ecosystems and what we can do to stop coral bleaching. So we see some similarities that we have back home, some differences between this very ancient, giant system. We have seen everything from the laboratory that some scientists have dedicated to extracting the venom from jellyfish to possibly cure cancer one day. There is also marine debris science where they are figuring out how to clean the oceans, which is another problem we have at home. And they have some great research on that as well. So it’s an awesome day because it’s the first time they have opened it to the public in a few years, so we are very lucky to come here and check this out before we sail up to Cairns and check out the Great Barrier Reef where we will dive ourselves, hopefully, and continue to follow us on Hokulea.com. Aloha!

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