Tying up some loose ends

I need to offer some thanks to the people who made this adventure possible.

First there are Doug McCauley and Fio Micheli who accepted my offer to assist with the projects.  Despite all my jabs at Doug about how hard he made us work, I knew what I was getting into, and it was just what I expected.  That is, except for doing the inventory of seven years of accumulated stuff.  Poor Francesco, who was fighting an ear infection for three days, had to do much more of the inventory while I got to continue diving.

Second there is my boss, Bob Schwarzwalder, who did not hesitate when I asked for his OK to take time off.  I had just agreed to host the Stanford science and engineering librarians retreat, so this meant the venue had to be changed and someone else was going to have to handle the logistics.  Bob was quick to follow up with the comment that I now owe him big time.

I also enjoyed the opportunity to interact with the teams from Scripps and UC Santa Barbara and learn about what they were doing.  I look forward to seeing more of the high resolution composite sea floor image maps that Gareth is producing. I particular appreciated having Katie Davis from UCSB on my "team" for the twice a week clean-up duty.  Since Katie needed to get out into the field before breakfast, she would clean the bathrooms while most of us were still in bed which meant the rest of us only had to do the showers. I managed to leave Palmyra without having to clean a single toilet bowl. Thank you Katie.

Thanks to Meg, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife officer, for taking me out for a great, albeit short, snorkel on the one Sunday afternoon I had off.

Meg

Last, but not least, I want to extend my thanks to the staff who kept the place running smoothly which allowed the science to progress un-interrrupted.  Katie and Robin kept us very well fed with a huge variety of delicious meals, and Robin also did our laundry for us six days a week.  Jack was a life saver helping get the pneumatic drill working along with finding the right tools or pieces of equipment when they were needed.  Chris and Hank were great boat captains, and Hank's skill at handling large sharks made the tagging efforts go very smoothly.  Perri, of course, was overseeing everything including dealing with a number of medical issues that inevitably arose.  Thanks to all of you for making is so easy for us to focus on getting the science done during the limited time we had on Palmyra.

Robin, Katie, Perri, Hank, Jack, Chris