July 11th Day 21

It has been exactly 3 weeks to the day since I arrived in Moorea and it has flown by so fast. We once again went out to the west part of the island again today to do similar work as yesterday. We went to LTER 6 today and boy was the swell huge. We could see these large swell breaking on the reef crest and boy was it a sight to see. The spray from these waves was so significant that it lingered in the air well after the wave had broke it was incredible. The water was equally as incredible in two ways. For starters it was crystal clear. As I have dove more here in Moorea, it is getting harder and harder to tell which day I had the best visibility underwater. However today I think was just as good if not better than yesterday. Secondly the water where we were today at about 35 feet was much surgier than it was yesterday at LTER 5. Doing plot rugosity with Russ and Tom was quite the task in those conditions. Tom and I were being thrown around like crazy while trying to hold the pvc in place to help measure with. We got three done in 2 dives but I would say my second dive was much better than the first. I had more time to look around on the second dive since we only did rugosity on one plot and I got some decent pictures. I took a good one of a scorpion fish that was literally hanging out right under our measurement stick. They are venomous and I made sure to point it out to Russ so he wouldn't touch it accidentally. On our safety stop we got a good look at some black tip reef sharks off in the distance on the sand floor. We were able to look down at least 80 feet below us at this sandy bottom where a number of reef sharks were just cruising. It was quite a site to see these guys glide along the bottom so effortlessly. I took some video and a few blurry pictures and then got back onto the boat. On our way back to Gump, one of the engines on the blue boat freaked out and for a while we had to put put along with one engine. Once we got back that engine we sped the remaining way home and then shortly after took a boat out to the reef crest to collect algae. When I first jumped into the water, I spotted a big sting ray right off the boat and managed to get a real good picture of it. Between our collection of algae, Tom pointed out an octopus and a real stonefish. I had never seen a real big stonefish before and I was able to take a few real good photos of it. It blended in so well with the coral but I think I got a real good picture of it. This stonefish looked like a green rock with eyes which was amazing to me. When we got back to Gump the day of work was done. I worked a little more on the trip with Erica and then had another delicious dinner courtesy of Stella. She made enchiladas that were amazingly good, especially for being made here. The sad part was that my cooking partner Mike and I had to clean it all up since we cook tomorrow. It took us over an hour to clean everything up but I got to say that the food itself made it totally worth it. After dinner I started to feel tired and having worked on this blog entry I am getting real sleepy so it's time for bed. Until later.