I know when I tell people I am going to spend a month on the Palmra Atoll they envision me making a couple dives and then sitting back and sipping Mai Tais as I watch the sun set in paradise. While I expect to have a great time and enjoy some phenomenal diving on a pristine coral reef, this is going to be work. Weather permitting, I will be doing three to four dives a day. Much of the diving will involve drilling into dead coral to install bolts for holding settlement plates. The goal is to install 180 tiles. That is a lot of plates, and I understand the vibration from the drilling attracts sharks that are numerous. Also, while Palmyra is a tropical "wet" rainforest, it is a "dry" atoll -- no booze served.
Doug McCauley is leading our team of three. I first met Doug when he was interviewing for the Ph.D. program at Hopkins Marine Station back in 2005. Over the next six years I would bump into Doug at Hopkins in between his forays into the field. When he wasn't on Palmyra he was often in Africa. I remember receiving an email from Doug when he was having a problem downloading a journal article. He was in the throes of writing his dissertation and explained that he was sitting on a porch with his laptop and a pile of rocks next to his chair that he used to throw at the baboons if they got too close. I am glad to be going on this adventure with someone with experience working in remote, exotic locations.
After completing his Ph.D at Hopkins, Doug took a postdoc at UC Berkeley. This spring he will be joining the faculty at UC Santa Barbara. He is a bit camera shy. Photo directories often have a fish photo or some other placeholder for Doug's face. I have also seen photos of him on a web pages that later mysteriously disappeared. He did capitulate when he created a nice set of personal web page for competing in today's job market. Below is a photo found on those web pages, so hopefully he won't make me take it down. He has some great photos and descriptions of research programs. You can check it out at:
May 27, 2015 UPDATE:
As I prepare for my third field season on Palmyra and look back at my old blog entries, I discovered the link and photo I had posted here were dead. Since Doug is now a full-fledged tenure track faculty at UCSB, his web pages have moved to:
Also he is no longer able to hide from the camera, so it is much easier to find photos of him online. Here is the original one I posted back when I made this blog entry. This time I actually uploaded the image instead of just pointing to a URL that might change again.
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