Another successful day

We headed out right after breakfast today to return 20 tiles and pull 20 more. The FR9 site is a bit challenging for me to get oriented because there is no slope. For most diving I do, I can easily tell by the bottom topography which way is onshore and which is offshore. Despite the lack of a slope, I managed to find the correct transects. As we motor back to the lab with our tiles stored in a cooler filled with seawater, we enjoy a bag lunch. Sabina graciously took on the task of making me, Paul, and the skipper sandwiches and packing other goodies (apples, granola bars, etc.) to take out with us since we don't get back until after lunch is over.

Tonight they are showing a movie, but I need the time to catch up with my dive logs, make notes for the day, and gather some preliminary numbers to send to Doug who is in Africa searching for hippopotamus dung and Fio who may have already left for her field work in Baja. I also need to study the underwater photo mosaic of our study site to see if I can find the one tile we were unable to locate today.

For the past several nights it looked like we were going to get a nice sunset at dinner, but each time the rain came in and ruined it. Tonight we finally got a decent sunset.

our first decent sunset since we arrived

Paul came to Palmyra with a mission - to make a hat out of palm fronds.  Here he is hard at work.

Paul working on his palm frond hat

This is the second year I am not happy with the footwear I brought with me to Palmyra. I am used to either wearing socks and running shoes or being barefoot. Neither of those work here on Palmyra. It is too wet to wear running shoes and not safe to go barefoot. I did way too much walking in my new (and expensive) flip-flops while I was stuck in Waikiki and already had developed abrasions around my toes. I checked the community clothing area in the laundry/shower building and found a pair of red Crocs. They are better, but they are a little small for me and they too chafed the side of my foot. Palmyra has been rough on my feet.

borrowed red Crocs for my beat up feet