July 9th Day 19

Today I woke up at around 7:40 am to get to work at 8:00 am. I made myself a baguette with raspberry jam and went out to the dock to see what I had to do for work today. When I went out to the dock, I found out that I was reassigned to dive with Keith and Jessica on mooring dives on the Tahiti side of the island. Keith was going to go to that side of the island regardless to get instruments but Russ and Sally wanted to have him help deploy these algal growth tiles on the side of the island that he was going to in order to reduce the workload. Keith agreed to do this but said that he would need another diver in order to perform this task of deploying the caged tiles. Seeing as I am the swingman in this whole operation, I was told to go with Keith to help deploy these tiles and to do any associated support work that they were going to do. On our way out to the Tahiti side of Moorea today it was incredibly choppy. The wind out of the northeast was horrendous and we had to power through it to get to our dive site that was near the crescent moon bay on the east shore facing Tahiti. On our way around the north-east shore where Taimai point, a world famous surf spot, we spotted what seemed to be an armada of boats. Apparently these boats were support and spectator boats watching an outrigger canoe race. I felt bad that I couldn't take a picture of this moment but the seas were too rough at that point during our journey to LTER 3 & 4 and I couldn't afford to take out my camera and risk losing it overboard. There were what seemed to be a million support boats alongside the canoes that were competing to help them along. It seemed on a day like today that those support boats would be extremely necessary. It was one of those days that you could not believe that anyone could be boating let alone paddling in those conditions. Once we got past the flotilla we anchored at LTER 4 and dropped down to do some instruments. This dive was completely new to me because it was much more of a drop off than I was used to underwater. From where we replaced our deepest instrument, it dropped off from 70 feet to about 110 feet within 20 foot distance. The view from this site was incredible. I think the visibility was close to the best if not the best I had ever seen and I was awestruck by my surroundings. I had to help Steph, my dive partner, replace both of the instruments because they both entailed some handiwork in which I could clearly tell she was not accustomed to. It took her a good five minutes to get a latch loosened that really should have taken much less time. Despite it all, I ended up helping her unscrew these instruments because she didn't really know how to handle tools. We then went up the slope, replaced another instrument, and then went back to the boat. We did another dive after that closer to Taimai but it was really short and as a consequence I didn't even take my camera. When we got back we got to clean instruments that were collected and then we called it a day. We had a really good chili with cornbread for dinner and then got ready for the our party with the French here at the station. We had fun under the fierpote socializing with the French from the CREOB research base. I talked to Thomas some more about sharks and all the sharks that I will be seeing in the Tuamotu islands when I go. I also met Machu who works at the juice factory down the road. He is a very entertaining Frenchman who comes from somewhere in southern France and currently resides in Paris. He brought a bunch of fruit and vodka drinks from the factory and while we were all sitting around trying all these different bottles he taught me how to say "spectacular" in French so I could say that about every bottle he gave me. They just went back to CREOB now at 1 am and I better go to bed so that I can get up in the morning. Until later.