Some twists to our usual routine

It is Sunday and the staff has off and so do the "cleaning teams". Sabina, Paul, and I clean after breakfast (bathrooms, showers, laundry) and after dinner (kitchen) on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The rest of our team includes Jack who runs the shop and Jan the second cook. Another team has Mondays and Thursdays, and the third team has Tuesdays and Fridays. No one cleans on Sunday except for everyone pitching in to do some basic cleaning of dirty dishes and counters in the galley. Katie makes sure the refrigerator is well stocked with plenty of food to help yourself to dinner. She made pizza for us to zap in the microwave, and there were also lots of left overs from meals earlier in the week along with a nice salad. It is really hard to lose weigh here even if one is getting a lot of exercise.

Joel, one of the two skippers, took us out diving today even though it is a Sunday for which we were very appreciative. Since we were delayed three days getting out here, we need to make up for some lost time. On our first dive today we re-deployed tiles on the FR7 deep transect.  Here is a photo of Paul and Sabina taken a couple days ago by Fish & Wildlife officer Lindsey Hayes while he was snorkeling above us while we did the same task except on FR9.

Paul & Sabina re-deploying tiles at FR9

photo by Lindsey Hayes

As we motored from our first dive site at FR7 to our second dive site at FR3, we put out lines to try to catch a fish. I believe we are allowed 3 fish every 7 days. Sabina hooked an Ono, but it slipped off the barbless hook as she was pulling along side the boat to be gaffed. Bummer.

Paul & Sabina watching the fishing lines for a strike

The boat had a bunch of dolphins riding our bow wave as we trolled for fish.

dolphin 

Once we got to the FR3 site, we collected 20 tiles from the deep transect and then returned to the lab to process them. After we re-deploy them tomorrow, we will have finished all the shallow and deep transects and have just 3 middle transects remaining. If the weather holds, we should be able to get to all 180 tiles.