August 3rd Day 44

Got out to the dock today anticipating a pretty big day. I knew that we were going to start the coral collections for Russ and Sally's experiment today so I made sure I was out on the dock a few minutes early to meet them right when they came down from their bungalow. When they did, they told me to just do Gump with Steph first so that they would have time to figure out exactly how they wanted to collect coral. Gump initially was same old same old. But right around the 8th anemone, we saw a titan triggerfish swim by which was really cool. This guy we saw had to have been close to two feet long which is decently sized for these guys. As we continued on, Steph spotted a turtle laying on the bottom about 30 feet away from us. It was my first time ever seeing a turtle underwater like that. This guy was awesome to watch as it swam away into the distance. I got a few pictures of it but they were from a distance which means it looks a lot smaller than it actually was. When we finished up Gump, we got out of the water and got our stuff ready to collect coral. We went with Russ and Sally first out to LTER 2 to both pick up tiles and get some small corals growing on the coral rubble. It took Russ and I forever to find the tiles which led to us wasting a decent amount of air. Once we found them, we were all business until the bag with our plastic baggies for coral collections floated up to the surface. Luckily it hadn't drifted to far away and was easily visible from the bottom. I went and retrieved the game bag as Russ continued to harvest the tiles. Right as we finished that, we started collecting the corals. Russ used a hammer and chisel to knock loose rubble with tiny corals on them. We did this the rest of the dive and then went back in to drop off the tiles and corals so that we could go back out and get more. We took a quick lunch break first before heading back out. Russ and I collected another 90 corals to go along with the 150 corals that Russ, myself, Sally, and Stephanie collected earlier in the day which gave us plenty to glue to the tiles. The rest of the day I spent helping Russ and Sally get the corals prepped to be glued onto the tiles. While I was cleaning out one of the tanks that we placed the coral tiles into, I found a little baby bennett's toby. These guys are real small and look like little hummingbirds underwater because of how fast they move their little pectoral fins. I guess it might have gotten in through the intake pipe which led him to the pool that was in. Regardless I had to get the little guy out of there before I drained the tank. After about 15 minutes or so I finally caught it with a little fish net and then was able to set it free into the bay. That was basically the last thing that I did at work. Directly after this we had another dive master class and then it was dinner time. Tonight we had noodle and chicken dish again which was good although a bit too similar to last night's meal for my taste. I have been browsing the internet now for the past couple of hours and now I am getting tired. Time for bed. Until later.