While we might take a morning next week and go diving back on FR7 to see if we can locate any of the missing tiles, for the most part all the fun field work for the coral settlement project is done. Ana and Tim are out in the field today working on their own projects, and I have started the process of preparing all the tiles so they remain unbroken as they are tossed about by the airport baggage handlers.
Out of 180 tiles we installed in 2013, two were lost and 4 were broken in 2104. The broken ones were dried and taken back to the mainland. That left us with 174 to locate and pull this year. We had received dire warnings that the 2015 storms had really trashed the coral reef and we might not find any of our tiles in place. Fortunately, things were not that bad. We managed to locate and recover 139 tiles with only 35 that were either ripped out by the storms or so overgrown that we could not find them on the reef.
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| 89 tiles packed with 50 on the counter to go |
This afternoon I finished wrapping 89 tiles, and I have 50 left. Each tile is put in a zip-lock bag and then covered in bubblewrap. While they might all fit in a single ice chest, it is more than likely we will have to split them across two ice chests in order to keep the weight under the airline's 50 pound limit for checked bags.
The cot was added to the dry lab for whomever is monitoring the radio during night operations. Any group working at night on any of the islands other than Cooper Island has to check in every hour. That is in addition to checking in when they leave and arrive at the dock and when they arrive and depart the island. So far 1:30 am is the latest any group has returned from working at night.
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