Day 95

A lot has been going on these past two weeks!  We spent a lot of time preparing our research presentations, which we presented to the public on the 13th.  It was a lot of work and I'm very happy to be done with it, but the actual presentations were fun!  Dressing up and talking to large groups of people doesn't scare me.

Last Saturday was a clean-up dive at Yellow Sub, the dive shop we go to.  There were over 110 people there for the clean-up, and I ended up diving with a man I met on the Bonaire online forum named Trevor--so now I have two dive buddies with the same name, but one is 20 and one is 78.  We picked up lots of bottles and trash, so it was a success.  Unfortunately some people didn't understand that once coral is growing on a piece of trash, it has become part of the reef--I saw a guy taking up a tire with coral on it, and he probably killed a bunch of baby fish in the process.  After the clean-up dive there was a free barbeque, and I sat with Old Trevor and some folks from Sweden and had a great time.

Last night we went camping on Klein Bonaire, the little island next to Bonaire.  After 5pm (when the last water taxi leaves the island) we had the whole island to ourselves!  We were supposed to have a professor and intern come with us, but because neither of them actually wanted to come, I requested to take full responsibility for all the gear and people--so we got to go alone!  (Not that it would have been bad with them there, but it's more fun to just have your own group.)  Thank goodness nothing bad happened!

That's the main island back there behind Leah. 
(Props to Chris Sundby for the pictures, since I forgot my camera.)

Beach bonfires aren't allowed because the island is an important turtle nesting area, but there are charcoal grills that we used to make our hotdog dinner.  We almost forgot the matches but fortunately I found them in the dry bag--phew.  We set up our tent next to the water and had the entire beach to ourselves all night!  We chased a lot of crabs and even saw a feral cat!  We fell asleep in sand under our bottomless tent and slept to the sound of waves.  It was fantastic.

Our tent next to the beach!

The view this morning.

I woke up first and started the fire for breakfast, but then realized I forgot basically all the cookware--which was completely my fault.  I attempted to use a flat-ish rock to cook eggs on but that was a total failure because the eggs slid right off.  I ended up using an upside-down glass lid (that's right, I brought a lid but no pan) to scramble eggs, and I cooked the bacon right on the grill.  And you know what?  IT WAS DELICIOUS.  Take that, MacGyver.

I am a genius.

See that bacon?  Yeaaaah.

I made most of the breakfast but OF COURSE the picture
is taken while I'm having a food break.  (Also see the failed
Egg Rock behind the egg carton.)

There I am cooking! Right behind that huge bush!

Camping on Klein Bonaire was one of my favorite experiences here and I'm trying to set up another trip for next week!  Wish me luck!

Day 84

I swam with THREE sea turtles off Klein Bonaire yesterday!  (That's the little island.)  It could have been 5, actually.  One was a different species but two were swimming in the same direction as me, and I saw them together, so I'm assuming that I saw three.  But still, TOTALLY AWESOME!!!  Sea turtles are so graceful and cute!  Not like land turtles at all.  And for once, I was the only one to see them!  Muahaha!  (Sadly, I was in class doing work and I didn't have my camera.  Not so sad: yes, that is actually what I get to do for class here.  I'm gonna miss that.)

Other than that, though, it's been mostly crunch time around here.  We're working on powerpoint presentations for our research projects, since we're apparently giving a public presentation to whoever wants to come.  And I actually expect that 'public' to be around 50+ people, so I don't want to screw this up.

I spent most of the day lounging around at the dock, though.  I met a Dutch guy named Jolt, how cool of a name is that?  (I also know a guy here named Marvelous.  He's actually pretty great, so I think he lives up to his name.)  I did go out and take a few pictures of cup corals for my project, but I have to go out again and take more tomorrow.  It's a rough life.

Here's the only semi-decent photo I took today:

In other news, let's all learn something today: the directions (north, south, east, and west) are not generally capitalized; they're only capitalized when referring to a specific region.

Example: I live in the Midwest, which is north of Bonaire.  I live on the east side of Michigan.

Source?  Purdue Writing Lab, baby.  That's pretty legit.  I bring this up because my advisor (whose native language is not English, mind you) berated me today for not capitalizing directions in my paper and powerpoint.  Her exact words were, "Isn't English your first language?  You should know this."  And the intern with her (who is not a nice person in general) completely agreed with her.

If there is anything we can all learn from this--other than the correct capitalization of directions--it's that you shouldn't act too smug when correcting people, because there's always a chance that you're wrong, in which case you are going to look pretty stupid.

Day 82

We've all been super busy the past week working on our scientific papers!  Everyone has had a research project for the past six weeks, and now we have to get down to business and do the write-ups.  The papers are getting 'published' in the research station's in-house journal Physis.  It's not peer-reviewed work so it isn't true science, and it's likely that no one will ever read any of our papers, but it's still something.

But enough about work!  We rented a car for the weekend and went diving all over the island!  On Friday we hit Red Slave and the Salt Pier on the south side of the island.  Red Slave was amazing--I saw my very first sea turtle!  We've been here for two and a half months and I was the only person who hadn't seen one.  And it wasn't just any sea turtle, it was a loggerhead!  He was only about 4 feet away from us, and he swam up a little bit to check us out... before I scared him by chasing him.  Oops.  Despite totally freaking out I actually managed to get a picture!

My very first sea turtle!!!  He was so close!

Foureye butterflyfish!  You always see two together,
because mates stick together.

A coney in sponges.

Salt Pier was another really cool site.  You're technically not allowed to dive there without a guide, but we just hopped in the water one site over (Salt City) and did a suuuuuper long surface swim.  Salt Pier is where ships come to load up salt from the salt ponds, and the pier supports are the dive site.  There were tons of sponges and corals growing on the pier supports, and there were fish everywhere!  I also saw another turtle at the end of that dive, although it was a little sea turtle.  He was cute though.

These are the pier supports.

A sergeant major next to sponges and cup corals.

Looking up from the bottom.

A yellowtail snapper with a school of smallmouth grunts.

Schoolmaster snappers!

French angelfish!

This is a female queen parrotfish getting cleaned at a
cleaning station, where little fish eat the dead skin
and parasites off the bigger fish.  Yummy!

Smallmouth grunts.

Sponges grow like CRAZY on the pier supports.

An itty-bitty harlequin bass.

A spotted eel!

Eagle ray!  These guys are big and beautiful!

On Saturday we started with a drift dive from La Dania's Leap to Karpata, on the northeast side of the island.  La Dania's Leap is unmarked so it was a little hard to find, and it's a one-way site; you have to jump off a little rock ledge (about 2 feet high) to get in, and there's no way out.  Karpata was one of my favorite sites yet.  The topography of the reef was like nothing I'd ever seen; the reef was shaped like mountains, sloping sharply upwards.  There was also a very cool wall, which is basically a flat vertical edge, that was at about 120 feet.  I think I got a little narc'ed down there!  (That's short for nitrogen narcosis, which you get when you go deep.  It's not bad, you just feel a little silly, like you're on laughing gas.)

After Karpata we came home for lunch, and in the afternoon we headed down south for a double dive at The Lake and Margate Bay.  I took a ton of pictures, but my camera has a wet lens that I forgot to get wet!  That's why there's lines in some of the pictures.  Oops!

Lionfish!

That yellow thing is called a Basket Star.  It's all wrapped
up around the gorgonian (the purple thing, it's a type
of coral.)  I poked him but he wouldn't unroll.

Foureye butterflyfish.

The view was pretty great!

A grasyby sitting on a vase sponge!

I'm pretty sure this is a coral with its tentacles out.  Fuzzy!

A yellowtail snapper sitting in gorgonians, and one of my
fellow divers (not sure who) in the background.

I never get sick of this.

Look how much stuff is growing here!

A pair of banded butterflyfish.

Schoolmaster snapper!

A tiny little sharpnose puffer!

Another view.  :)

I got food poisoning on Saturday night after eating Subway, so I was up all night sick.  I tried to dive on Sunday afternoon, but my sinuses weren't happy and (according to my dive computer) I got down to all of 4ft before my face felt like it was exploding.  I spent the hour walking along the beach and got attacked by an eel trapped in a tidepool!  (Don't worry, he didn't actually get me.)  But I had a great two days of diving, so no complaints!

One last picture: a land crab!  I didn't even know they existed until I found one outside the lab last night!

Isn't he cute?