Making progress on the project, changes at Palmyra, and Paul's project

First the weather report. It rained very hard last night at 1 am, then again at 4 am, and for a third time at 6 am.  Fortunately it didn't rain all day today. I hope it continues in this pattern, raining at night and dry during the day. It was overcast all day. Hopefully we will get some sunny days too, but I am happy if it just isn't raining. It isn't so much the rain I mind as it is the puddles and muddy slush it makes on the paths around the station.

Today we finished processing 20 tiles from the shallow transect on the FR3 site. We managed to reinstall 10 of the tiles. Tomorrow we will finish installing the remaining 10 tiles before moving on to either the FR7 or FR9 sites to pull more plates.

For those of you who read my blog entries last year, there have been a number of changes since then. For example, last year every time you went into the kitchen you took off your shoes or flip-flops. Now you keep your footwear on. Someone stepped on a piece of broken glass at some point, so the rules quickly changed. This means if I return I will probably bring different footwear. I am thinking something like Crocs. Despite my buying expensive flip-flops, I am a hard walker and they are chafing my feet around the big toe.

They also removed the WiFi in the Galley. The idea is that people should be interacting with each other and not on the mobile devices when in the Galley. While I understand this, I really miss being able to go to the Galley early in the morning with my iPad to check email while waiting for breakfast to be served. Now I am walking all the way over to the lab to get my morning email fix.

Since there are only 9 scientists in residence right now, all of us have our own cabins. This was a luxury I enjoyed last summer while most had to share their cabins. I am in #4, the same waterfront I cabin had last year.

Last year we were using two wheelbarrows that were falling apart and not really designed for hauling SCUBA tanks. The Nature Conservancy asked us to fill out an evaluation at the end of our stay, so I responded to Laurie suggesting they invest in something better for moving tanks from the dive locker to the boat ramp. Thanks, Laurie, for making this happen.

new cart for carrying SCUBA tanks

Another request I made to Laurie was to fix the wall air-conditioning unit in the lab which was dripping on my computer last year. I kept my laptop covered with plastic last year. It is fixed, so thanks again to Laurie for arranging this.

Finally I have to show Paul's first project.  He loves to build things, so he is enjoying having a shop and having a lot of materials at his disposal. He came up with this idea without any prompting on my part. We are trying to keep the critters on the tiles happy while the are in the lab during processing.  We have an ice chest full of seawater with bubblers to keep it oxygenated and heaters to keep the water warm. There are also two digital thermometer probes to measure the water temperature. The water at our site was about 81 to 82 degrees.  Paul built the setup you see below and glued it to the top of one of the ice chests we shipped over on the barge.  Doug, if you are reading this, this is why I said there would only be one ice chest coming back with us.

Paul Leary's first building project