Finally on Palmyra and my first full day of work behind me

My first full day was busy. We made two dives right after breakfast. The first one was to check out our dive gear and adjust our weights. We also scouted out the tiles we plan to retrieve and marked the end one with flagging. I also took several pictures of the tiles in situ.

caged and uncaged settlement tiles after one year on the reef

On the second dive we retrieved 10 of the tiles to bring back to the lab to photograph and look for coral polyps. Here is an example of what one of the tiles looked like:

settlement tile overview photograph in the lab

We also take four more close up photos of the four corners of the tile with the center hole always showing up in one corner. Any coral polyps we find are counted, measured, mapped, and photographed. So far we have found one, maybe two. We sent a copy of the one we were not sure about to Dan Brumbaugh to help us confirm the ID. When we are looking for corals, we shine blue light on the tile and then look for fluorescence using amber colored eyeglasses. Of course we spot other cool things like a very small nudibranch and polychaete worms.  here is a baby anemone we found. It is blue because of the lighting we are using to spot corals.

baby anemone found on tile under blue light

As we were heading out this morning for our dive, there was a full rainbow over the sailing yacht anchored in the lagoon.  In addition to making a reservation to use the lagoon (only two boats allowed at a time), all boats must have passed a rat inspection and had their hulls cleaned within a few days of leaving port for Palmyra.  Once here, they can only stay a week.  This group is very nice, and the ships chef made lunch for everyone on the day the plane arrived for both the arriving and the departing science teams.

full rainbow over visiting yacht