August 25th Day 64

Today when I woke up the wind was still howling like it had been all night. At points it sounded like there was a freight train outside of the dorms. It had calmed a bit by this morning, but it was still very windy. But because there was no swell today, we decided to go out to the fore reef to take a shot at retaking some plot photos that didn't turn out so well. It took us one dive to do it and despite the current in the upper water column, the diving conditions were just fine. When we got back, I worked on data for the rest of the day until my daily dive on Gump to take pictures of my corals. By the time we had gotten ready to get in the water, it was very windy again but this doesn't matter too much with Gump. What it did do however was kick up a ton of sediment which made the visibility rather bad. The dive took a bit longer than usual because of the limited visibility but we got the job done. Brett had brought down his spear gun to try to get a parrotfish for Russ and Sally's research but the water was far to murky to be doing that. It made me feel better that he wasn't shooting fish while I was working. Otherwise I could have ended up with a spear in my leg. Saw some cool stuff on the reef though which were quite incredible. First, I saw a couple of flounders have a bit of a turf war right in front of me which was much like something out of Planet Earth. Then later in the dive I saw the biggest moray eel that I have ever seen. It is along the transect so I am pretty sure I will be able to find it tomorrow so that I can take a good picture. On my way back to the steps I stayed shallow to look for the helmet gurnard fish that I had seen a few weeks ago but it was nowhere in sight. Once we got back we were done for the day and I headed in to take a nice warm shower. Worked on Fulbright until having burgers for dinner and then got back to work on it after dinner. I now have a good idea of what I am doing for my project but I have to write my proposal in the next week and a half which is a bit of a rush. When I went to go across the street, I realized my sandals were not there. Somehow my sandals are gone but I hope that they turn up. I'm super tired now so I am going to go to bed. Until later.