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9/24/00
This has been the most incredible research mission I've ever been
involved
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We've dived the submerged walls of sunken islands (Nihoa and Necker) and saw a plethora of ocean-going species, like bonita (i.e. kawakawa), rainbow runners, mantas, silversides, and the impressive yellow fin tuna (i.e. ahi). We've also dived shallow coral reefs in the sand plains of a sunken atoll (French Frigate Shoals) where we were pleasantly surprised by the high diversity of coral reef fish and the two 6 foot gray reef sharks that graced us with their presence. Some dives haven't been so pleasant. Those often involved horrible visibility or currents so strong that we'd have to swim hand over hand to make any headway. But, then again we did see some huge giant trevally (i.e. Caranx ignobilis, ulua, above) on one of those dives.
In fact, I counted about 80 ulua on our last dive. Some are really huge like 150 cm and 150 pounds. It's like having rather large inquisitive puppies following us around on our dives. The same goes for the Hawaiian monk seals that we saw at Nihoa and Necker. They were always coming to check us out, one even tugged at the line connected to me and my floating dive flag.
Dolphins kept our attention our first night at French Frigate Shoals. The stern flood lights attracted millions of tiny mysid shrimp, crab larvae, small larval fish, juvenile puffer fish, turtle hatchlings, flying fish and needle fish. The later two were the delightful meal for the dolphins. We were able to watch as they chased down and caught fish for dinner.
9/26/00
What an awesome day! We are in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and the
water is glass calm. I've seen the sun set and rise the
past 5 days and I've slept under the stars about
every night. Shooting stars, talking story, and
jam sessions. I've really enjoyed spending time with the people on
board. We work well together as a team and have achieved a lot during
our precious time here.
Every day I'm out here I think about how lucky I am to be here and how thankful I am for the schooling and the on-the-job experience that led me here.
9/29/00
The past 2 days have been spent underway traveling from French Frigate
Shoals to Midway. Everyone has been using this time
wisely to input data and catch up on site
summaries. The only problem is that the weather has taken
a turn for the worse. I guess we all knew that the glass calm conditions
we'd been experiencing couldn't last the whole trip. We've had passing
showers and building seas that make for good seasickness conditions.
I'm thankful for the seasickness medicine I'm taking.
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So far, I've only talked about all the great things we are seeing, but I haven't talked about what we are really doing here. Basically we eat, dive, dive, eat, dive, eat, enter data and sleep. Our daily schedule includes rising before the sun and eating breakfast. Then it's dive, dive, dive. We strap tanks to our BC's and tug on our damp stinky wetsuits. We work as a team loading the zodiac with 7 sets of dive gear, 4 cameras, dive slates, DAN oxygen kit, dive flag and 7 divers ready to go to work for the day.
I'm the safety diver for my team, REA I (Rapid Ecological Assessment, team1). The safety diver logs dives and watches out for the safety of the team. The safety diver is first in at each site and is jokingly called the sacrificial diver. Let me explain. There are a lot more apex predators up here and they are often extremely inquisitive. Giant trevally jacks will often follow the zodiac and have been known to bite boat propellers among other things. So, I get in and give a quick report of visibility, current and predators. Luckily I haven't been the desire of any big ulua or sharks, so far.
The fish team (Dr. Bill Walsh, Brent Carman, and Steve Cotton) hops in next and quickly descends to the bottom to lay out 3 transects. The transects are 25 meters long and are used as a reference point and as a measurable area for obtaining species densities. The 1st time down the length of a transect 2 divers count and identify all fish greater than 20 cm, the 2nd time is all fish under 20 cm and the 3rd is a broader look around for all fish species seen. The 3rd diver does 5 stationary point counts, where they go to 5 different points and do a 360 degree look around and out to 10 meters (approx. 33 feet) around them. This person also video documents the fish species and abundance.
My job during the dive is to keep an eye on everybody and the blue waters around us. We don't want any tiger sharks creeping up on us. The second team of divers comes down and I show them where the transects are laid. The coral specialist, Dr. Jim Maragos, videos corals along the transect and keeps a list of corals seen during the dive. He also photo-documents rare corals that are seldom seen in Hawaii. The invertebrate specialist, Ralph DeFelice, and algae (seaweed, or limu) collector, Erica Klohn follow and record species seen and collect specimens for use in later identification and for museum collections. Erica is finding that Halimeda appears to be the most abundant algal genus present on the reefs here. Halimeda happens to be the genus I studied for my master's thesis. Sounds funny, but it's like seeing an old friend for the first time in a long time.
So, we do this 3 times a day almost every day. After each dive we come back to the ship to replace our used tanks with fresh ones and get amped up to go out and dive again. The evenings are spent entering data from our dives. I'm keeping track of all my team's dives and entering that information on the computer. So far I have the most time underwater for my team, I'm 1st one in and last one out with almost 23 hours underwater so far.
My job lends itself well to learning the fish that I'm seeing while I'm keeping an eye on my divers. I've been keeping a list of all the species I've seen and it so far includes over 80 fish. It's one thing to look up a fish in a book, and a whole other thing when it comes to remembering their names when you're down on the reef. I feel like I'm back in school, but this is my kind of school, hands-on learning.
Since this is going on the web, I'd like to say hi to all my friends who are teachers and are sharing this research mission with their classes.Also, Hi to my family and friends, wish you were here.
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