Three dive day, and almost done our primary task

First the weather. It started off as a gorgeous day.

sunrise today from the Galley

But it did rain today, and tonight after dinner we had a heavy downpour. The station manager, Perry, is frustrated because he wants to schedule a community clean-up day to rake the leaves, but you need a 24 hour period with no rain so the leaves are relatively dry. So far we have not had 24 hours without rain. I am also frustrated because we haven't had any spectacular sunsets like we did last year when I was here.

On today's first dive, we re-deployed all the FR3 middle transect tiles except #175 which needs to be re-drilled. We then went to FR7 and re-deployed the second half of the middle transect. For our third dive, we pulled the middle transect at FR9. We then headed back to the lab and processed all the tiles we pulled today before dinner. We are now done processing tiles! We were able to recover 179 out of the 180 tiles we put out last summer. We have taken over 1,800 photos of tiles, and 616 microscope photos of coral polyps and planula larvae.

Now for the fun stuff. I spotted a sea turtle during our second dive, and Paul chased it for a bit with his GoPro camera. It was one of the few dives I brought my camera along, but it was set for close-up photography and by the time I got it reset, the turtle was gone. I did take some coral photos because in describing tile locations for next year's team I used descriptive terms since I haven't had time to look up scientific names. Here are a few that I took and what I called them. I will add scientific names later as I get them.

potato chip coral

I called this a mushroom coral, but I know that common name is used for a different coral

gray finger soft coral

Sinularia sp. ?

As usual, most of the pictures get taken while doing our safety stop at about 15-20 feet. Here are ones I took of Sabina and Paul. Paul loves to ham it up for the camera.

Sabina doing safety stop

Paul posing for the camera

Here is one Paul took of me yesterday. We were doing our safety stop when a small backtip reef shark started getting curious. I was swimming after it to try to get close for the photo.

me with a curious blacktip reef shark

I spotted a pod of melon headed whales on the boat ride between dive sites, and skipper Ron headed up toward them so we could jump in with them with snorkel gear on. Paul and Sabina were in the water quickly, but by the time I decided to join them they were already heading back to the boat. I was surprised since it was a very large pod, and it looked like more were heading our way. I then learned that in addition to the whales, there were several large gray reef sharks circling. Paul and Sabina exited the water quickly, and I never made it in.

Last year Doug took care of handling the Hoff. This year I am the one who is usually tethered to the float that is used by the boat captain to keep track of the divers. Here is a photo of me ready to enter the water with the Hoff.

me with the "Hoff"