19:00 After breakfast I discovered one
of the OTS girls had also been out to the same remote site in Indonesia, so in that
moment the world felt incredibly small and we had an in depth discussion about
how the area had changed through sharing our experiences. It was great to hear this from the "next
generation" of marine scientists - now I am just making myself sound old.
DL and I went to the lab and deciphered
the DVD's work however a drive on a laptop doesn’t. Then I followed by stumping DL with the
"albino hawk" which we decided might be a White Hawk, where is ML
when you need him…!
Snorkelling was next. The water was again very clear and very blue
water, which worried me slightly with the past couple of weeks attending to
dead fish. However, soon I thought of
how there could be a notable difference in fish community dynamics, maybe due
to the red tide certain fish had ran away or perhaps I would see something(s)
new, so I became excited… however this was not really the case.
I saw a group of Sabertooth Blennies
together, fish that pretend to be cleaner fish but bite their fishy clients
instead and I saw red tide bubbles and foam.
To top it all off there was a Nurse Shark chilling out on the bottom, I
couldn't believe it when an American kid first said "Dean, there's a shark
here." I made sure people gave it
space, and soon proceeding by diving to the bottom from a considerable distance
away, moving slowly towards the graceful creature and snapping a few photos.
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| Good Dog Snapper Shot (D.Philpot) |
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| Nurse Shark Close-Up (D.Philpot) |
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| Can You See The Scorpionfish? (D.Philpot) |
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| Scorpionfish Front (D.Philpot) |
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| Porites Coral Bitemarks By... Pufferfish, Not Parrotfish! (D.Philpot) |
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| Suspicious Looking Foam (D.Philpot) |
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| Green Is My Favourite Colour... (D.Philpot) |
I don't believe anything was especially
around because of the red tide, the dead fish on the surface were snapped up by
other opportunistic fish and other animals just a few hours after they started
to wash up on the beach. ML had arrived
when we swam back in with more mail for me in hand which is always great to
hear, one of my nans (grandmas) had attempted to write to me in Spanish which was
really sweet bless her. I also found out
that one of the cooks was ill… once the other smaller mischievous cook got me
to "jaguar attack" her, which was admittedly highly entertaining
though I would not have done it if I knew she was ill.
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| A Resting "Caballo" (D.Philpot) |
Would you believe I almost stood on
another yellow Cane Toad tonight, I say yellow as no-one seems to tell me an
alternative name to the normal Cane Toad.
This was on the way to a lecture on fish acoustics with reference to
sharks by Phillip Lobel, who is renowned for his work with sharks and for
working out in remote places such as the Chagos archipelago, Papua New Guinea - PNG and Palau.
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| Flag Cabrilla Dissection (D.Philpot) |
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| Unknown Blenny Species (D.Philpot) |
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| April Night Sky (D.Philpot) |