Friday, August 27, 2010

Return to Dolphin Beach

This past weekend, it was time again for the semi-annual-ish Philosophy of Biology at Dolphin Beach conference, affectionately known as PBDB (pronounced "pay-bay-day-bay," if you're a native). For those of you who need a refresher on the concept, PBDB is a teeny little workshop-style conference on topics in philosophy of biology (duh), which brings together philosophers and biologists (and one wayward psychologist) for a weekend at the Dolphin Beach Holiday Park just outside of Moruya Heads, New South Wales.


Michael and I headed down to the coast in a hire car early on Friday morning, stopping in Braidwood on the way for the traditional lunch of savory pies at the Braidwood Deli. We skipped the steak-and-Guinness flavor in favor of the veggie curry.

Then we picked up our groceries for the weekend in Batemans Bay, and made it to the cabins by early afternoon. Michael wasted no time in settling in:

There were two talks in the evening, after everyone had arrived, and then we all grilled dinner together under the stars. Following dinner, we decamped to the beach for drinking and general merriment. The moon was too bright to do any proper stargazing, so we didn't feel at all bad about brightening things up with a beach bonfire.

What makes PBDB a unique conference is that it puts first emphasis on the place, not on the work. Sure, we're all there to listen to talks and give feedback and talk about intellectual issues, but it would be a crying shame to be stuck inside doing that when there's a beach literally across the street from our cabins.

For that reason, all of the talks are scheduled for the late afternoon and early evening, to allow plenty of time for beach-ing beforehand and for dining and chatting afterwards. And, for that reason, Michael and I found ourselves on Shelly Beach on Saturday morning, tugging on our wetsuits in preparation for a snorkel in the calm waters of the Pacific Ocean.


(Sartorial aside: The guy at the dive shop said that I was lucky he could find shoes that would fit me; it's the smallest size they make.)

The water was crystal clear and shockingly cold --- about 15 degrees C (that's about 60 degrees F, if you're keeping track) --- but I could hardly feel it inside my wetsuit and through the excitement of paddling around the cold-water corals and kelp forests. It wasn't the Great Barrier Reef, to be sure, but it was no less intensely thrilling for that. There were tons of fish of all sizes, my favorite of which were the pufferfish who buried themselves in the sand with just their bulging eyes showing, and darted quickly away on seeing us swim by.

After about a hour of snorkeling, we warmed up and dried off on the sand, then went back to the cabins for a grilled cheese lunch and hot showers before the afternoon talks. I took a bit of a break between two of the talks to wander around the grounds and say hello to the kangaroos eating grass between the trailer hook-ups.

On Sunday morning, we snorkeled again, this time at Mystery Bay. Luckily for us, the sun and tides held, and it was again an absolutely perfect day for being in the water.


We managed to make it quite far out despite a strong current, for which I think I should be grateful, since the work of swimming helped to keep me quite warm. We saw more pufferfish, a few solitary large fish, and several large schools of small fish darting in and out of the kelp. Michael's advisor, who has taken up marine biology as a serious side-interest, even spotted an octopus:

It was hiding under a rock formation just at the entrance to the cove, in water so shallow that I could stand in it. I definitely would never had seen it without PGS's help, and even after he pointed it out, all that we could see were its eyes and a swirl of tentacles that it had drawn in around itself.

Luckily, that wasn't the last of the natural highlights. On Monday morning, on our way back to Canberra, we drove to the far end of Dolphin Beach and spotted a pod of dolphins swimming just offshore...


...as well as a whale!


I know it's a little hard to see, but trust me, it was there.

I love Dolphin Beach not only for the marine life, but also for the birds. This one is a red wattlebird:

The kookaburras on the grounds are quite used to humans, probably because they've been fed sausages off of the barbies one too many times. This one flew right up to our porch railing and let me get really close:



Given all that, it's not hard to see why this is far and away the best conference I attend. Sure, it was a little difficult to sit through academic talks after I'd been snorkeling all morning, and it's also true that every single article of clothing ended up covered with sand and had to be washed --- twice! --- upon our return to Canberra. And it must be said that this year suffered a bit by comparison to last year: no dramatic night skies, no bush poetry, no skinny-dipping in the phosphorescent bacteria... But I can't possibly argue with three days of glorious sunshine, swimming, good friends, and good times. Now that's the kind of philosophy I can get into.

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