Heron Island II

I spent 5 days on the island, 3 of which were for work. In the other 2, I was lucky enough to get some scuba diving time in. We managed to get on the resort's dive boat standby (there is a small resort hotel on the island) for 65$ a dive. Quite funny, the dive sites are just a 5 to 10 minute boat ride to the outer reef. The reef drops from 1-2 to 20-30 meters + about 1 Km off the island, and that is where the most diversity resides.

The great barrier reef is amazing! Fish everywhere, but it's the size, diversity, and sheer beauty that impresses the most. Those 35 minutes passed like a blink of an eye. Here's what I logged for my first ever non-training dive:

Coral cascades, water temp 26 degrees, 13m visibility, saw nudibranch, white tip reef shark snoozing on a sandy patch (they are one of the few sharks that can lie still without suffocating).

That's not much information for a first dive in the GBR, eh? Well I was quite busy taking pictures and videos with an underwater camera. Not such a good idea.... Didn't take much of the dive in and the pictures aren't quite extraordinary. Nonetheless, there are a few you can enjoy.

Next post will be a video mash-up.

Some nerdy RNA structure stuff

Just thought I should let you know there is a recent decimal release of RFAM (10.0), most novelties are a consequence of the Infernal 1.0 release although there are also nomenclature changes that are quite convenient. It now contains 1446 ncRNA families, including the self-proclaimed "deepest alignment of all time" containing over 1 million tRNA sequences. Read more here.

Also, I know that some of you are interested in generating secondary structures for your favorite RNAs. I just discovered this amazing website that allows users to display 2D RNA structures comprehensively. There was a recurring problem with most 2D RNA display programs as they weren't flexible with the representation, e.g. overlapping stems would mess up your nature paper figure. This program, VARNA, even accommodates pseudo-knots and uses animations to switch between sub-optimal structures :) Check it out here.