A little excitement in the morning

Shortly after breakfast we headed out to the FR3 site. Of the three sites, this has the hardest diving with both a big swell and a strong current. As we began to turn after coming out of the channel, we spotted lots of smoke about where the lab is and where all the data is sitting that we have collected so far. We had been drying the four broken tiles, and I could just image somehow the oven we had them in catching fire. Ron immediately radioed back to shore, and to my relief we learned that they were burning trash today and the wind had shifted pushing the smoke into the lab area. I decided to send out emails with the data we had compiled so far to Doug and Fio so there would be copies somewhere off island. Of course we have well over a thousand photos that are too large and too many to send over the internet, but I am backing them up onto a flash drive just in case.

The first dive did not go very smoothly. One tile broke and was lost when it fell off the stand we use to transport the tiles underwater. Three baseplates were missing, and a couple of baseplates were out of sequence. We ended up returning to the boat with several tiles that we will have to try again to re-deploy.

On the second dive at FR7, the main goal was to re-drill four holes where we had problems earlier. Paul took care of the drilling, and he didn't even need a second diver to hold the extra SCUBA tank to power the pneumatic drill. I think Sabina took a photo of his set-up for handling all the equipment solo, but those photos haven't been downloaded from Paul's camera yet. Paul also took care of the molly bolt and Zspar. Zspar is an underwater epoxy that you mix together and it remains pliable for about an hour before it becomes too hard to work with anymore. Here is what it looks like:

Zspar epoxy

Paul tried to take charge of mixing up the mustard and black parts to activate the epoxy. He tried using gloves and putting equal parts into a zip-lock bag and then mixing it up by squishing the bag a lot. It did not work well. I stepped in, and using bare wet hands, grabbed equal amounts from the two cans and worked them together under seawater I had in an empty plastic ice cream container. The ball I  made was then placed in a ziplock bag filled with seawater.

Paul's failed attempt at mixing Zspar epoxy

While Paul was doing drilling, Sabina and I returned two tiles that had been held back. One was a cracked tile that we repaired (#84) and one was where the baseplate had escaped during removal (#100). The baseplates are positively buoyant, which means you can't let go of them for a second. Fortunately Joel, our skipper for the day, spotted it floating on the surface and was able to grab it.

After the drilling and re-deploying, we pulled about half of the FR7 middle transect tiles until we were low on air and needed to surface.

Last night as I was returning to my cabin at around midnight, I ran into this guy blocking the path.

coconut crab