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 ...

I hope you're having a wonderful day,

Cristi

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.