September 5th Day 73

Today I got out of bed knowing that this was my last official day of work. I turned on my computer and found a commented draft in my inbox from my advisor in Germany which was a good start to the day. When I went downstairs however things got a little interesting. Turns out someone came into the dorms last night and raided the fridges of juice, a hamburger, and some alcohol along with mine and Brett's sandals and a pair of shoes belonging to one of the other people on station. I started to laugh just because of the ridiculous luck I have been having with sandals here. I ended up taking a pair of Tahiti sandals that have been sitting by the front door of the dorms now for months and I was surprised by how comfortable they are. I managed my way over to the dock to get assigned to do my last Gump dive. I tagged along with Steph as she did the damselfish anemones and it was a nice last dive. When we finished with that, I did some random clean-up tasks and then got off for lunch. After lunch we led Keith for our beach dive for dive master and had a good time diving the wall at the public beach. Ended up seeing the biggest yellow trumpet fish I had ever seen there but too bad I didn't have my camera on me. When we came back we did some of our talks and dive briefings for our dive master class and then called it a day. Keith had me go snorkel out to BOB, a buoy they deployed today, and take some cool pictures of it. On the way back I snorkeled for a little while chasing around some fish and then went in to take a shower. Got a chance to talk to my parents and Erica one last time while I have internet and then away I went off to the crepe cart for dinner. It was delicious to eat and man would I go back in a heartbeat. Got a dinner and dessert crepe which definitely filled me up. While I was there, I talked with Susan who had broken her finger climbing up the swim ladder of the 609 for a bit while we were there about my Fulbright application. Turns out the guy who I will technically be working under was her grad student. What a small world. She said he was a really great guy and that made me feel even more reassured than I already was. When we got back to Gump, I gathered up my stuff and headed across the street to the morph lab to work on all my Fulbright stuff. Now it's 3:30 in the morning and I just finished up with everything except my blog. Since I am leaving Gump and my computer behind tomorrow, this will be my last blog post for this trip. I plan to keep a written journal during my travels and adding it to this blog after I get back to the states. But alas this is my goodbye to this blog and Moorea. I have had the time of my life here getting to know some great people and be involved with some great research in a beautiful place. I hope that sometime soon I get to come back here and experience some of what I have again but if not, it was a great ride that I will never forget. Good morning and good night Moorea hope to see you around the bend. Until later.

September 4th Day 72

Today was another day for clean-up. We first got the Gump survey out of the way and then got into putting away all the things we brought out at the beginning of the summer. Foosball tables and picnic tables alike were carried across the street to be put back into the containers for next year. While we were doing that, it certainly seemed a bit nostalgic putting away everything that I had brought out two and a half months ago. It really made it hit home for me that my time at Gump is almost over. Steph, Brett, and I powered through all the cleaning tasks today and we were let off early since there wasn't anything else left to do. It was nice for me to be able to work on my proposal during the day when I am fresh and in the mood to really get work done. I had a productive three and a half hours writing. Got a good draft done that I gave to Andy to look over as well as my advisor in Germany. It felt good to have that out of the way because I know that with those edits, I can make a reasonable proposal that is clear and understandable tomorrow. For dinner Brett and I made burgers and fried potatoes which went great with a few Hinano's. After dinner we went out onto the dock to look at the stars but unfortunately it was pretty cloudy and it kept sprinkling on us to the point that we decided to go back inside. He went to sleep straight away but I decided to stay up and do some laundry and get some packing done. I feel like I did about half of the packing I need to do so it won't be too big of a deal for me to get the rest of my stuff together tomorrow and on Tuesday. Now I am pretty tired so I think I'm going to hit the sack. Until later.

September 3rd Day 71

Today was my last day out at the fore reef on my trip here to Moorea. First thing this morning Andy, Brett, Susan, and I headed out to the Rapid plots one last time. Susan is a collaborator here with the MCR-LTER and she had never seen the fore reef on Moorea before. Brett and Susan followed Andy and I around as we went to each plot with coral tiles for photographs. We ended up taking pictures of one plot twice and were certainly pushing the envelope toward the end to get everything done in one dive. Considering that my Air 2/Inflator was leaking the entire dive, I am surprised I lasted. I think because we took pictures of 11 plots instead of 10 I had to push my tank below 500. When I surfaced without a safety stop, I noticed Susan was on the floor of the boat near the swim step and I knew when I saw this coming up the swim ladder that something wasn't right. Apparently she broke off her nail grabbing on to the swim ladder in the wavey conditions that awaited us when we came up. She also broke a bone in the same finger. When we were all back on the boat we cut the mooring and secured it to the bottom and then headed back to Gump. She seemed fine and we were really impressed by her nonchalant attitude. When we got back I got to working on the last of the boat trailers for maintenance. Took me a while but I got them all done. After that the day was pretty much over so we packed it in for the day. For dinner we cooked some swordfish that we bought at the grocery store before going to a native dance performance in Maharepa. The food was great and the show after was even better. The costumes and choreography were incredible to see. I have seen a number of Tahitian and Polynesian dances at school but never anything close to what I saw tonight. After we got back, I got to working on my proposal a little more before I got into bed. Until later.

September 2nd Day 70

Today was a dry day for me. Didn't end up getting in the water at all and instead worked on cleaning up the station in preparation for our departure. Worked on taking apart the shed for all the boat boxes and did some more trailer maintenance. The day flew by pretty quickly all things considered. We made a dent in all the trailer work we need to do so that made the day very productive. Right after work, Brett, Steph, and I the only people left in our cooking group, threw together a lasagna to eat for dinner. Funny that we didn't buy enough sauce and we ended up only being able to make a single layered lasagna. It sure didn't take any time at all to cook. Once we finished with dinner I worked on my project proposal for Fulbright until I went to bed. Got to get up early to go to the store tomorrow so I'm off to bed. Until later.

September 1st Day 69

Started the day with a quick Gump dive with Stephanie. It was pretty normal except that there are a ton more fish on each anemone now since a large settlement wave came through so I decided for the sake of time to let Steph do all the counting while I swam around and took pictures. We were in a bit of a hurry to get done so that we could go ASAP to the west side with Keith to do fish transect maintenance. We got off Gump and put our stuff onto the boat with new tanks and took off. We ended up coming right back because the SAFE boat couldn't get up above 3000 rpm so we went straight back to the dock at Gump to get the 609 to take to LTER 6. There was a large swell once we turned the corner which wasn't fun in the smaller 609 but we made it to the site. We did our maintenance and then hopped back in the boat to go back to Gump. Surprisingly Keith pulled into the pass that is right by the ray feeding site which caught us all off guard. He took Steph and I to the feeding site which was cool. Jumped in the water and it was completely different than the last time I came. This time there were tons of black tip reef sharks swimming around which was totally new for me. The sharks were swarming around a tourist boat that was dropping fish into the water to feed the rays and sharks. We came over to watch and was it a site. The rays were on the bottom in a scrum trying to get to the food that fell through the sharks that were swimming right above all the rays. It was really cool to see and got a ton of video and photos of all the sharks. Once we got our fill, we got back on the boat and headed home. When we got back, we had lunch and started to do clean-up and maintenance. The last part of the day we worked on the boat trailers sanding off rust and then we called it a day. When we got off for work, we made some breaded chicken and veggies for dinner. After we finished, I went up to my room to do work and then got into bed. I'm super tired. Until later.

August 31st Day 68

Today was a day of data and clean-up. Entered and fixed data to be entered up until the late afternoon where I got the chance to go on another Gump dive for Brie and Katrina's beach dive. When we got to diving it was pretty similar to what I always see. I did see some cool life though along the way that made the dive pretty cool. Most notably I saw a big puffer fish that I was able to get up real close to and take a bunch of pictures of. It was pretty big for a puffer but this was the first time I had ever seen one. Other than that it was pretty ordinary and when we got done, we headed in to take a shower and get ready for Sammy and Katrina's goodbye party. Started off by going to a Allo's Pizza on the other side of the bay for dinner. I had a margarita pizza with a coke and some chocolate moose ice cream.It was a bit pricey but I had my own bit of pizza left over for lunch. The servings are one size, plate pizzas. After we got back everyone gathered out around the fare pote and enjoyed each others company until late at around 12 when people started to peel off. I was so tired so I came in to get some rest so that tomorrow I can really get working on my proposal. Going to bed. Until later.

August 30th Day 67

I woke up this morning feeling much better than I did the day before. I felt perfectly fine to go do the last dive for the Porites rus measurements. It was long but it went well. Most of the time the coral bommies were within a half meter of the surface so we were even shallower than we were our first day doing these measurements. Once we finished up, we came back to the station and I started doing clean-up related things like laying out lines to dry and rinsing transect tapes. After lunch I did data entry until we got everyone together to do our boat dives for our dive master class. Steph and Brie led their dive to the left of Cook's Bay. Katrina and I were playing a married couple of 30 years who were very different in dive skill level. I got to be a tourist on that dive but then immediately after we went back in and got a few more people to go on our boat dive. Our dive went quite differently than the previous one. First off there were more people to keep track of. I took care of Andy who was actually 2 people Betty and Sue. Of course he made sure to get into the water without a weight belt on so that he couldn't go down. I had to get back up and get onto the boat to get it for him so that we could go down and meet up with everyone else. Once we got down to everybody, Andy was swimming around like he was riding a bicycle and was trying to suck down as much air as possible. He finally turned to me and signaled he was out of air so I had to share air with him to the surface and get him back to the boat. I felt like I was in my rescue AAUS course all over again. We eventually got everyone back on the boat and back to the dock at Gump where Keith gave both groups of dive masters a debriefing at the same time. He put a lot of different situations on us today which was good because it gave us all real experience in dealing with these issues. After that Brie and I made steak and cuscus for dinner. We ate quickly so that we could do some more dive master lectures and get them done. We all were zoning out toward the end and we called it a night after two short lectures. I ended up going out to the dock right after to lay down and look at the stars. It is incredible how brightly you can see them here. After I worked a little on my application before I headed to bed. Now I'm super tired so I am calling it a day. Until later.