Some twists to our usual routine

It is Sunday and the staff has off and so do the "cleaning teams". Sabina, Paul, and I clean after breakfast (bathrooms, showers, laundry) and after dinner (kitchen) on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The rest of our team includes Jack who runs the shop and Jan the second cook. Another team has Mondays and Thursdays, and the third team has Tuesdays and Fridays. No one cleans on Sunday except for everyone pitching in to do some basic cleaning of dirty dishes and counters in the galley. Katie makes sure the refrigerator is well stocked with plenty of food to help yourself to dinner. She made pizza for us to zap in the microwave, and there were also lots of left overs from meals earlier in the week along with a nice salad. It is really hard to lose weigh here even if one is getting a lot of exercise.

Joel, one of the two skippers, took us out diving today even though it is a Sunday for which we were very appreciative. Since we were delayed three days getting out here, we need to make up for some lost time. On our first dive today we re-deployed tiles on the FR7 deep transect.  Here is a photo of Paul and Sabina taken a couple days ago by Fish & Wildlife officer Lindsey Hayes while he was snorkeling above us while we did the same task except on FR9.

Paul & Sabina re-deploying tiles at FR9

photo by Lindsey Hayes

As we motored from our first dive site at FR7 to our second dive site at FR3, we put out lines to try to catch a fish. I believe we are allowed 3 fish every 7 days. Sabina hooked an Ono, but it slipped off the barbless hook as she was pulling along side the boat to be gaffed. Bummer.

Paul & Sabina watching the fishing lines for a strike

The boat had a bunch of dolphins riding our bow wave as we trolled for fish.

dolphin 

Once we got to the FR3 site, we collected 20 tiles from the deep transect and then returned to the lab to process them. After we re-deploy them tomorrow, we will have finished all the shallow and deep transects and have just 3 middle transects remaining. If the weather holds, we should be able to get to all 180 tiles.

Another day, another tile

Return tiles from yesterday, pick up new tiles, work them up in the lab, repeat. That is our mantra. Today we went out to FR7 and returned two tiles from the shallow transect that we missed yesterday and then returned 20 tiles on the deep transect minus one that was never found and one we could not secure and needs to be re-drilled. We then moved to FR9 where we retrieved 22 tiles. Twenty were from the deep transect, but we also picked up the first two from the middle transect. Here is what the stack of tiles looks like in the cooler as we transport them from the study site to the lab.

terra cotta tiles on a stick heading back to the lab

Today joining us on the boat was U.S. Fish & Wildlife officer Lindsey Hayes. Lindsey is here for 3 weeks while the resident officer, Stefan Kropidlowski, is back on the mainland having some dental work done. Since it was a last minute opportunity for Lindsey, he wasn't able to get all the medical paperwork and training done to meet AAUS scientific diver requirements before heading out with us to Palmyra. This means he can only snorkel. We had great sea conditions today, so Lindsay spent lots of time snorkeling above us as we worked below. Ah, the joys of diving in clear tropical waters such that you can see the bottom at 40 feet. Lindsey took some photos from the surface, so I am hoping some of them came out so I can share one on tomorrow's blog.

More blue skies today, so here you can see Lindsey, Paul, and Sabina enjoying the trip back to the lab on the deck of the Zenobia. Notice Paul is sporting his complete palm hat. He has plans to give lessons to everyone who wants to learn how to make one.

Paul (sporting new palm hat), Lindsey, and the bottom half of Sabina

There was a nice low tide as we crossed the lagoon, so you can see the extensive sand flats that surround Palmyra Atoll.

low tide showing the extensive sand flats around Palmyra

While the tile work for coral polyps is going well, we have abandoned the side project to collect small samples of crustose coralline algae (CCA) from the plates. The process was messy, was not very quantitative, and was going to significantly eat into the time needed to complete our primary task. Below is a tile showing our attempt at drilling out a small plug of  CCA.

tile #16 with the round area where we attempted to collect CCA

Another successful day

We headed out right after breakfast today to return 20 tiles and pull 20 more. The FR9 site is a bit challenging for me to get oriented because there is no slope. For most diving I do, I can easily tell by the bottom topography which way is onshore and which is offshore. Despite the lack of a slope, I managed to find the correct transects. As we motor back to the lab with our tiles stored in a cooler filled with seawater, we enjoy a bag lunch. Sabina graciously took on the task of making me, Paul, and the skipper sandwiches and packing other goodies (apples, granola bars, etc.) to take out with us since we don't get back until after lunch is over.

Tonight they are showing a movie, but I need the time to catch up with my dive logs, make notes for the day, and gather some preliminary numbers to send to Doug who is in Africa searching for hippopotamus dung and Fio who may have already left for her field work in Baja. I also need to study the underwater photo mosaic of our study site to see if I can find the one tile we were unable to locate today.

For the past several nights it looked like we were going to get a nice sunset at dinner, but each time the rain came in and ruined it. Tonight we finally got a decent sunset.

our first decent sunset since we arrived

Paul came to Palmyra with a mission - to make a hat out of palm fronds.  Here he is hard at work.

Paul working on his palm frond hat

This is the second year I am not happy with the footwear I brought with me to Palmyra. I am used to either wearing socks and running shoes or being barefoot. Neither of those work here on Palmyra. It is too wet to wear running shoes and not safe to go barefoot. I did way too much walking in my new (and expensive) flip-flops while I was stuck in Waikiki and already had developed abrasions around my toes. I checked the community clothing area in the laundry/shower building and found a pair of red Crocs. They are better, but they are a little small for me and they too chafed the side of my foot. Palmyra has been rough on my feet.

borrowed red Crocs for my beat up feet

A long but productive day

The day started off with a beautiful double rainbow. The ship anchored in the lagoon arrived yesterday. The skipper, Dustin, sailed solo from Hawaii. There were originally four ships sailing to Palmyra to visit, and two turned back.

view from the Galley

After breakfast it was off to the FR7 shallow transect to return 20 tiles. It is work, work, work to get this accomplished in an hour underwater, but then we have to hang out for 5 minutes at about 15 feet for a safety stop. This gives us time to look around and enjoy the amazing marine life. Among other things, we saw a dolphin swim by during the safety stop on our first dive. Paul also brought the GoPro camera along for the first time and took this "selfie" picture of the three of us.

Me, Paul, & Sabina doing our safety stop

We then moved on to the FR9 shallow transect to retrieve another 20 tiles for processing. We had some cracked tiles, which is a bummer. Since Paul had the GoPro with him, I asked him to take the photo below of uncage tile #4 which had a large piece of something encrusted with coral resting on top of it.

uncaged tile with debris resting on it

FR9 was a neat area, but there is much more relief and not much of a slope, so it was harder to orient to determine which transect line is which. The first two tiles we collected turned out to be a pair from the middle transect instead of the shallow transect. Subsequently we found the shallow transect and collected 18 of the 20 tiles before running low on air. Overall I have been doing pretty well finding the correct tiles given I relied on Doug to do most of the underwater navigation last year.

On the boat ride back we enjoyed the ono fish sandwiches Sabina had packed for us after breakfast. Here are Paul and Sabina on the foredeck of the Zenobia hamming it up for the camera.

Paul & Sabina enjoying the good weather

On the way through the channel we spotted Barbara Block's team who are tagging mantas as the rays pass through the channel into and out of the lagoon. They do the tagging while snorkeling, not on SCUBA, since the bubbles from SCUBA can scare off the mantas. The channel is a great place to do tagging while snorkeling since it is not that wide and not that deep.

Robbie Schallert & Ana Guerra tagging mantas in the channel

After dinner on Thursday is "science night" where someone from the group gives a science talk. Tonight the Fish & Wildlife Officer, Lindsey Hayes, talked about his many years working on Johnston Atoll studying birds. We enjoyed the talk while sipping a little wine.

wine with Thursday night science talk

Weather, work, and fun

Today was our first day with some blue sky. As we motored to our dive sites, Paul and Sabina were enjoying the sun a bit too much on the foredeck and got a little sunburned.

sunrise from my cabin this morning

On our first dive we finished returning 10 tiles to the shallow FR3 transect. We returned the first 10 yesterday. We then headed along the north shore of the atoll to about the mid-point to dive on FR7 for our second dive. This dive went amazingly smoothly. Unlike FR3, we did not have current or swell to contend with so we were able to pull all 20 tiles in a single dive. We then headed back to the lab after stopping to grab a quick lunch from the Galley. We then successfully processed them back in the lab and hope to be able to return them all tomorrow morning on our first dive. Below is what we are searching for under the microscope. Note that the piece of wire in the photo is 1 mm in diameter, so you get a sense of how small they are.

coral polyp with 1 mm wire below it

Sabina took this photo of Paul being welcomed by the resident red-footed booby on our arrival on Sunday.

Paul Leary with red-footed booby (Sula sula)

Building I missed photographing last year & food

Good morning.  It rained again last night, but this morning is the first blue sky we have seen since our arrival. Finally.

Last year I did a pretty good job getting photos of all the buildings on Palmyra, but I failed to take any of the shower/laundry room. In this building they do our wash for us 6 days a week. This allows one to live with just 3 t-shirts and always have a clean one to wear. Below is a shot showing the laundry facilities with the clean cloths lined up for people to come by and pick up.

clean cloths waiting to be picked up from the laundry

Across from the laundry there are 5 shower stalls with sinks as can be seen below. Today Paul, Sabina, and I are on clean-up duty. This means after breakfast we will be cleaning the laundry/shower area and the four toilets. We also help clean up the kitchen after dinner.

showers cubicles

Last night we had a delicious meal of freshly caught fish. Some of the fish was served sashimi style, and for those of us who have dissected enough fish and seen the nematodes and other parasites, a cooked version of the fish was also served. Also for dinner was a fresh spinach salad with crumbled gorgonzola cheese, strawberries, and pecans. There were fried potatoes and green beans too. Yum. It was topped off with a "donor" dessert. At first it didn't register with me what this meant. It turns out these were desserts usually served when donors to The Nature Conservancy were brought to the island. This year they didn't bring the usual group of donors out during the "off season" when the scruffy scientists aren't around. Below are the chocolate and lime desserts we had. The chocolate was wonderful, and I hope to eat one of the left over lime ones tomorrow.  Thanks Katie!!

chocolate "donor" dessert

lime "donor" dessert

Making progress on the project, changes at Palmyra, and Paul's project

First the weather report. It rained very hard last night at 1 am, then again at 4 am, and for a third time at 6 am.  Fortunately it didn't rain all day today. I hope it continues in this pattern, raining at night and dry during the day. It was overcast all day. Hopefully we will get some sunny days too, but I am happy if it just isn't raining. It isn't so much the rain I mind as it is the puddles and muddy slush it makes on the paths around the station.

Today we finished processing 20 tiles from the shallow transect on the FR3 site. We managed to reinstall 10 of the tiles. Tomorrow we will finish installing the remaining 10 tiles before moving on to either the FR7 or FR9 sites to pull more plates.

For those of you who read my blog entries last year, there have been a number of changes since then. For example, last year every time you went into the kitchen you took off your shoes or flip-flops. Now you keep your footwear on. Someone stepped on a piece of broken glass at some point, so the rules quickly changed. This means if I return I will probably bring different footwear. I am thinking something like Crocs. Despite my buying expensive flip-flops, I am a hard walker and they are chafing my feet around the big toe.

They also removed the WiFi in the Galley. The idea is that people should be interacting with each other and not on the mobile devices when in the Galley. While I understand this, I really miss being able to go to the Galley early in the morning with my iPad to check email while waiting for breakfast to be served. Now I am walking all the way over to the lab to get my morning email fix.

Since there are only 9 scientists in residence right now, all of us have our own cabins. This was a luxury I enjoyed last summer while most had to share their cabins. I am in #4, the same waterfront I cabin had last year.

Last year we were using two wheelbarrows that were falling apart and not really designed for hauling SCUBA tanks. The Nature Conservancy asked us to fill out an evaluation at the end of our stay, so I responded to Laurie suggesting they invest in something better for moving tanks from the dive locker to the boat ramp. Thanks, Laurie, for making this happen.

new cart for carrying SCUBA tanks

Another request I made to Laurie was to fix the wall air-conditioning unit in the lab which was dripping on my computer last year. I kept my laptop covered with plastic last year. It is fixed, so thanks again to Laurie for arranging this.

Finally I have to show Paul's first project.  He loves to build things, so he is enjoying having a shop and having a lot of materials at his disposal. He came up with this idea without any prompting on my part. We are trying to keep the critters on the tiles happy while the are in the lab during processing.  We have an ice chest full of seawater with bubblers to keep it oxygenated and heaters to keep the water warm. There are also two digital thermometer probes to measure the water temperature. The water at our site was about 81 to 82 degrees.  Paul built the setup you see below and glued it to the top of one of the ice chests we shipped over on the barge.  Doug, if you are reading this, this is why I said there would only be one ice chest coming back with us.

Paul Leary's first building project