The island experience

As shown on the welcome sign as you arrive, there are 19 of us here on Palmyra. If I am counting correctly, there is one US Fish and Wildlife Officer (Meg) and maybe six Nature Conservancy staff. There is the station manager (Perri), the cook (Katie), the assistant cook (Robin), the person in charge of diving and boats (Hank), the mechanic and all around handy man who can also skipper the boat (Chris), and I think one other person whose name and job I don't know. The rest of us are scientists, mostly graduates students or postdocs. The Scripps group of 5 came on the plane with the Stanford group. The group from Santa Barbara was already here, staying on after having already been here for several weeks.

The Zenobia is the boat that is used for going to the outer reef. Hank or Chris are the skippers. It is live boating since they do not want to anchor and damage the reef. We used this for today's afternoon dives. While I was busy dealing with my gear problems (first dive) and helping hold the extra tank for the pneumatic drill (second dive), I did manage to see a gray reef shark cruise by me just a few feet away.  He did not look hungry. My dive buddies saw several more sharks, but I missed them. I also saw a steephead parrot fish. Sorry no pictures. I didn't take my underwater camera with me on these first two dives as I wanted to concentrate on the new equipment, the new environment, and the tasks that Doug wanted me to do. Once things get more routine, I plan to take my camera and get some marine life photos.

Tonight I saw my first coconut crab. It wasn't an especially big one, but they are not that common on Copper Island. They  are much more plentiful on some of the other islands.

Note that I said tonight even though this will probably say it was posted on Wednesday, July 24. For some reason the bog still thinks I am in California. This means if I post something after 9 pm, it dates the posting for the next day.  So far I haven't been able to figure out how to fix this.