What happens when the surveys go too quickly...

The village of Vatia on the northeast side of Tutuila

We had 3 more dives today on the northeast side of Tutuila with amazing views of the island. The underwater portion was again unremarkable but the water clarity was better than I was led to believe. All 3 of the dives were in small bays that harbored villages. This can sometimes be a bad combination since the water flow may be reduced, plus any garbage from the land easily gets swept into the bay. But although visibility wasn't great, we didn't run into anything too gross. We did see the towboard team on the second dive which provided an easy and quick way of transiting back to the beginning of our transect line - Molly, my dive buddy, and I both caught on to the trailing tag line of one of the boards to effortlessly move 50 feet. I always have fun with this and now that I have a dive buddy that will join me, I don't have to worry about getting too far away from her.  I'm very happy about this.

We did run into a little trouble on that same dive however. Crown of Thorns Sea Stars or COTS are a nocturnal type of star fish that feed on coral. The thorns on the top side of their body are venomous and can lead to nasty infections if you get stuck with them. Outbreaks of these creatures can lead to the decimation of a reef and Molly has been working on understanding the various populations of these through out the Pacific using DNA technology. It is because of this that she has a lot of experience handling COTS and removing arms from individual COTS for DNA analysis. It is possible that through this work the COTS have come to recognize her presence in the area and are incensed by it. Evidently they still feel the anger of a particular uncle or aunty COT coming to a coral dinner with one less arm, care of Molly Timmers. I believe that this is why one of these cunning creatures - as feisty as a garden snail - attacked Molly on her bum today. But evidently the creature reconsidered its original strategy and decided to take on the pose of either a starving brain sucker or a lovely Sunday hat. You can decide which it is :)

By the way - the thorns are venomous and this shouldn't be tried at home. Molly is a trained professional who is evidently easily amused and needs more sleep :)  I used at least a 1/4 of my air tank laughing underwater.

I hope you are having a wonderful night.
Take care,
Cristi