My second elective for semester 2 is Muir, an Outdoor education unit focussing on snorkelling and orienteering. My main goals for this subject were to have fun because the activities that we were doing seemed fun and engaging like snorkelling and orienteering. I did achieve this as it has been a lot of fun doing activities with friends and the excursions that have been lots of fun. The most fun parts of the Muir unit was the orienteering excursions. Jorgensen park in particular was the most fun as we had the longest to go out by our selves and orienteer. This was fun as we roamed around the national park using our map reading an compass skills to navigate us to the signs we were looking for. Some capabilities we were using were resilience, so if we didn’t find something we could keep trying not giving up until we found it, problem solving to find where we needed to go when we were wrong and if our path was blocked thinking about another way to go about things. I also liked the snorkelling aspect as its a common activity I do, we only got to go to coogee once before Rottnest and it wasn’t the greatest time as it was windy wavy and limited visibility. The water wasn’t cold which was good the wet suit really helped. Some capabilities I used here would be Awareness because we would be looking up to see where the teachers were where my buddy was and when we were signalled to go back in. I also had to use effective communication talking to my buddy when to go in where to snorkel as you must stay close with them.
My highlight of the Muir unit was definitely the Rotto Camp, this camp was only 1 night but much better then last year which was only a day trip but since has been upgraded to 2 days 1 night. After arriving we went to little parakeet which was the snorkelling location for day one. We went on 2 snorkels one to the left and one to the right. Throughout the trip the water was very cold. We mostly saw small fish some bigger angel fish and a baby stingray. The best part was snorkel 1 where we were able to swim through a tunnel full of fish. the next day it was the basin where we did one snorkel and with the large swell we almost got slammed against the rocks but it was good because we saw a mulloway and a massive school of trevally.
The most funny and memorable moment was probably the beach cricket games we had while waiting for our turn snorkelling, There wasn’t one thing that happened but it was very fun and there were multiple moments of everyone laughing and messing around playing cricket. But there was one moment on the start of the second day there was a massive game of soccer team Damo and Team Howard. The game was a lot of fun and I remember it being very chilled and fun where everyone got involved and played.
The plants and animals that we saw were obviously Quokkas as they are everywhere around rotto. There were various types of seaweed and fish that we saw like the trevally I mentioned earlier and the Stingray. There were also lots of the sea birds around the island like pelicans.
The weather effected us quite heavily in that we needed good weather and not much wind which we got. Not the warmest days but still sunny and not very windy. The Basin had quite a swell but apart from that the weather was very good. The weather could have effected us by being very cold so the water was even colder then it already was. And if there was lots of wind because that would mean more waves and it could make it much more dangerous by hitting us against the reef which can be very dangerous luckily we got very good weather.
The LNT aspect was very important because to preserve great environment like this we had to do very import things like do emu bobs to pick up all rubbish around that is harmful to the environment that can be consumed by animals like quokkas and birds. I tried to do my part by picking up rubbish and even at the beginning of the snorkel on the second day I found a fishing like with a sinker and hook i had to bury out of the sand because there could have been a fish or bird that could have tried to eat it or get tangled up by it which could cause great harm. This was part of what I did as my Part to Leave no Trace.
