Wednesday, April 29, 2009
The Sulfur Seeps of Maug
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Uracus and the Steves
Friday, April 24, 2009
More time at Pagan
Good morning,
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Pagan Island
Today we moved on to Pagan Island; two volcanoes joined by a narrow strip of land with one that is still smoking from an earthquake a few months ago. The island is ~ 18 square miles in total area and is the fourth largest in the Northern Marianas Chain. It was inhabited in historic times, however a 1981 eruption forced all inhabitants to evacuate and no one has returned. There are still a few buildings remaining and wild cows and pigs that were left behind. The above-water landscape is amazing with sea cliffs, black sand beaches, coconut palms, and ironwood trees with a bare cinder cone in the background. The underwater portion is less than spectacular. I was surprised but our first dive site was covered almost entirely in a type of bacterial mat that normally only forms when there are too many nutrients in the water. I am curious to see if this is the case, possibly from recent volcanic activity? I’ll have to ask the oceanographers after they analyze their water samples for nutrients. The water is also very warm, 84, so that may have something to do with it. The second and third dives were boulders in black sand with more coral colonies perched on them. The highlight was seeing the tow team twice underwater. It is becoming quite familiar to hear the distinctive whir of their engines as they are now making a habit of including our dive sites in their surveys for data consistency. Most of the time when we hear that whir we stop working and start watching for the tow line so that we are not surprised when they come past. When I am not paying attention, I have often felt someone grab the back of my SCUBA tank and start towing me along with them. But this time I was watching and I was able to take my first towing lesson. As Ben went past, he motioned to me to take the towboard as he hung on to a trailing line behind it. Molly, my dive buddy had grabbed on to trailing line on the other board. I loved skimming above the bottom, much faster than I could swim. I had to remind myself that I had work to be doing and eventually Molly and I went back to our work. I think I’ll be watching for the tow team more often.
I hope you have a wonderful day,
Cristi
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Sarigan
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Seeing Small Things
As a member of the Benthic Team, I document what I see along the bottom every 6 inches for a total of 150' at each dive site. This means that I spend most of my time with my head between coral heads and algae, so I miss a lot of the cool fish and what not that may be swimming past me. But one benefit of looking that closely at the bottom is that I get to see a lot of the small things that I would otherwise overlook.
The Blue Grotto, Saipan
After over a month at sea and 50 dives, we came into the port of Saipan. We had 3 days on land and we needed to work for at least 2 of them. So you may wonder what did we do on our day off? Go diving of course. Yep - I find this rather amusing myself, but Friday morning bright and early at 6am I was prepping dive gear. Eight of us piled into a minivan and made our way to a dive site called the Blue Grotto. When you drive up, you can't tell that you are near the water. From the parking lot, it looks like you are on top of a set of sea cliffs and a good hike inland from the coast. So we geared up next to the van and made our way down a staircase that opened up into a vertical tube with 100' cliffs, a pool of saltwater at the bottom (complete with crashing waves) and a rock in the middle of the pool. The trick is to clamber out onto the rock so that you can jump off the far side into 30' deep water. And like the little crabs that scurry back into the water when they are spooked, we all tumbled off the rock on the far side, more or less gracefully. From there you drop down to about 40' deep and you can see that the tube is fed by 3 massive tunnels leading out to the open water at the base of the sea cliffs. The tunnels themselves are ~ 40' high and 70' wide and are the real highlight of the area. Once out in the open we found a wave-scoured area with numerous fish, fan and wire corals. All of these have been sparse so far around other islands in this archipelago so it was a treat. We even found Nemo.
I am off to prep more dive gear for now. We are back at work around Saipan.
I hope you have a wonderful day,
Cristi
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Last Day at Tinian
Good morning!
We finished surveys around Tinian yesterday and it was the first really spectacular weather day that we've had. It was sunny skies and flat water with not a swell or white cap in site. The last few islands that we've been around, Guam, Rota, Aguijan, and Tinian, have all been composed of limestone that has been dissolved through the years by the pounding waves and rain. This has left really amazing caves and overhangs that you can see from the water. Some of the caves are at the water's edge and others are half way up the cliff face. I haven't seen anything like this before and it has made for some dramatic transits between survey sites. The diving has also been very calm but unfortunately the reefs appear very degraded. We saw a great deal of coral death and a type of bacteria that forms mats over everything. This is generally found when there are too many nutrients in the water possibly from agriculture or housing runoff. We still found interesting things to look at and it was nice to be in an area where we weren't getting pushed around by the swells. It was as calm as being in a swimming pool - really wonderful.
Unfortunately, our small boat, HI-1, wasn't having as good of a day as we were. It has been having intermittent transmission troubles for the last few days which clear up whenever we bring the engineers out. On our last dive, we could hear the boat and the rhythmic knocking as if there was tribal music playing. This was a new aspect to our dive that we hadn't heard previously. Then everything went quiet and as we were swimming back to the boat, we noticed that the anchor line was down - not a good sign. The boat had evidently stopped working all together and a tow boat from the ship was on the way to bring us home. So we had a very quiet, slow ride back with plenty of time to consider the luxury of such a large diving platform versus the inflatable Avon that we will be using until HI-1 is up and running again. So begins our adventures aboard Avons! Wish us luck ...
Our Tow Boat...
By the way, I haven't figured out how to change the post time on my blog. So in case you were wondering, I'm not awake at all hours of the night typing diligently on the blog. I actually tend to find my bunk by 9pm. Sleep well.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Happy Easter!
I wanted to send a quick note before the dives today just to say good morning and Happy Easter! Egg decorating was successful and had a great turnout. Even the CO (Commanding Officer) joined the fun. We're at Tinian today, another small island just north of Guam and 3 days away from our next import. Ben's boat is in the process of being loaded and I have two more small boats to go before it's my turn. I have to go get geared up now, but have a wonderful day and I'll write more soon.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Getting Ready for Easter Egg Decorating
We have completed diving at Rota and Aguijan, two small islands north of Guam, and are on our way to Tinian. Luckily data entry for tonight is almost complete as easter egg decorating will begin in 15 minutes! We have already been discussing color palettes and are looking forward to a few hours of candy, eggs and dye. Should be fun. If you see the Easter Bunny, be sure to wish him good luck since he has a long swim to make to the ship this evening - we are a day ahead of the mainland and so E. Bunny will be beginning his deliveries tonight. Fortunately for him, we have seen virtually no large fish to get in his way.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
What do I do?
It has been asked, and rightfully so, what it is that I do out here? Why does someone pay me to SCUBA dive? I work for the Coral Reef Ecosystem Division (CRED) of the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center. This program has been monitoring the health of coral reefs around all Pacific islands under US jurisdiction every 2 years since 2002. I dive with a team of 8 people and the goal is to evaluate the overall health of the coral reef at each site we visit. We lay out two transect lines (75’ measuring tapes) that we swim along taking measurements. We can use this as a representative sample of the environment in that particular area. I identify what is on the bottom every 6” along the line - coral, algae, sea star, sponge, etc. - so that at the end of the dive I can list the species and calculate the percentage of the bottom that is covered by each of them. I can compare this data to past years to see what, if anything, is changing. This is helpful in spotting invasive species or when things such as corals are dying off. For example, when a ship runs aground on the reef, a lot of contaminants are spilled into the water. This will often cause an algal bloom for many years afterwards, which can overgrow the coral. It is important to know what the environment was like beforehand to be able to tell how much damage was done and how, if possible, to correct it. The rest of the members of my team do similar things with small fish (less than 18”), invertebrates (sea stars, urchins, anemones, hermit crabs, etc) and coral. The coral divers count the total number of coral colonies and measure them. This allows them to see if new corals are coming in to an area or if there has been some sort of die off.
The two other teams on the ship are oceanography and the tow team. The oceanography team deploys instruments to measure a wide variety of parameters such as nutrients, pH, currents, and temperature. This helps to complete the picture of what is happening in the water around these islands. The tow team (Ben’s team) circles the islands in a small boat, towing two divers behind them at 1-2mph and 5-10’ above the bottom. These divers are able to cover a much larger area than someone free swimming, photograph/video the bottom, and count the large fish (greater than 18”). There are not that many large fish living close to the reef, so to get an idea of their population size, it is necessary to cover larger areas. All of this data is generally used to monitor the state of the reefs, not restore them. However other agencies use our data to launch restoration projects and make decisions about how to manage their reefs. For example, after the governor of Samoa learned that the amount of large fish around Samoa, a heavily populated area, was much lower than around other islands in Pacific, he proposed closing the fishery for large fishes. On the other hand, when the governor of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands found that large fish generally remained only around the most remote northern islands, he proposed holding a fishing tournament there. So unfortunately we can’t control how our data is used, but some good does come of it. The decisions to create the Northern Hawaiian Islands and the Pacific Remote Island Areas Marine National Monuments were both based largely on data that CRED has collected through the years.
I hope this helps in understanding what it is we do out here.
Take care and goodnight,
Cristi
Monday, April 6, 2009
Swishy Diving
Take care,
Cristi
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Land Ho – well, sort of
At 2:45pm on March 31, the island of Guam was sited off our starboard bow, however I think I will have to wait a few more hours to actually be able to see anything distinct. It still looks like a dark spot on the horizon and if you use your imagination and squint, you could make out a palm tree or two. Not really, but you can start to make out some of the mountains (the picture was taken much later). This sighting comes as sort of a bittersweet tease. I have been spending the last 3 days working on the computer for 10-12 hours each day and I have another 48 hours until work is done. This might not sound that difficult until I mention that our desks are in a 20x20 room with 12 other people (and the associated conversations), music often coming from one or more computers and a ping pong table 3 feet behind me. Today I have been ducking paddles and balls consistently since 9am and I must say that the amount of work I’ve gotten done is remarkably small. At this point, even with the use of earplugs, I would pay for a bit of peace and quiet that hopefully the island will provide. As soon as all my work and dives are done and I can get off on my own in Guam, I will hopefully be gone, not to see anyone from the ship for a good 36 hours. If I’m really lucky, Ben will have time to come with me. I must not be the only person feeling the need of some solitude. I just heard a conversation between two scientists that included: “Please just don’t talk to or interact with me for the rest of the day.” This was said to one of our more vociferous personnel. In the year that I’ve known this person, it has been extremely rare to see and not hear her. I have even heard her talking underwater - I didn’t know that could be done, but I guess she was determined.
For now I will get back to work. I hope you are having a wonderful, quiet morning.
Take care,
Cristi