Today again was not a favorable day to do open ocean water sampling so instead I headed out to the west side with Tom, Andy, Russ, Sally, and their daughter Melissa. Melissa does research diving here and has been coming every summer her entire life. She is a senior now at Santa Cruz and does a lot of the fish count work here for the LTER. We headed out to the west side of the island to LTER 6 to finish up rugosity measures that we couldn't finish a couple of days ago. We also ended up going to LTER 5, which is toward Tahiti, to deploy some plot tags for future reference. On our way back we spotted some dolphins offshore of this pass where there were a bunch of surfers which was cool to see. The waves on the west side of the island are just so much bigger than what you see on the north side usually so the surfers seem to aggregate toward that side of the island. Once we turned the corner there was a ton of wind chop. We were in the big boat at the station and yet we were getting tossed around like a rubber duck in a bathtub. It got so bad that we decided to go through the lagoon to get back to Cook's Bay. We cut in at Opunahu Bay and went through the boat channels where most of the lagoon tour boats go to get back. Once we got back we headed right back out to collect our herbivory assay that we set out a couple of days ago. Turns out the fish really did a number on one of the algal species that we deployed and Sally found this to be very interesting. After that task of collecting the assay and weighing it out to determine the mass consumed by herbivores, we called it a day. Had some curry for dinner along with a Hinano beer and then called it a night. Until later.
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