I Hope You Have A Fast Internet Connection

Sorry about the delay in writing. We were all working on our research project proposals, so I've been keeping busy. That, and I've been going on many excursions, as illustrated (that's right! new pictures!) below.

Wednesday night I went on a night snorkel on the Gump station reef with Dave, Ashley, and Nate. Last time I went on a night snorkel, there was great visibility and the water was very calm. This time, there were a lot of particles in the water and the sea was very bumpy due to the wind, which made it very hard to take pictures. In the end, we all got a little wigged out with the low visibility and high urchin and creepiness content, so it was a short trip.


This is a lionfish, though I'll admit he looked a lot less blurry in person. If you don't know about lionfish, the red and white striped spines are very very poisonous (kind of deadly, actually), while the rest of the spines are more or less decoys. There are 4 or 5 resident lionfish in the area just offshore from our station, so we see them around quite often. They're pretty friendly, and as you might have guessed, they're really rather hard to miss.


This is some kind of eel. I'm not sure why I keep posting eel pictures, but they do make for rather dramatic photography. (I believe the drama comes from the fact that they always look simultaneously pissed off and moronically happy.)


A soldierfish I cornered in a hollowed-out coral head. They're typically plentiful in the area but rather skittish, especially around giant creatures chasing them with blinding lights.

On Thursday we went scuba diving on the point across Cook's Bay from our station. No one in our group had ever been there, so it took about 2 minutes for us to realize that it's a far better site for snorkeling than it is for diving since many more of the organisms grow and live at the top of the reef, but whatever. We still saw some cool stuff, and we'll probably end up making a return trip later in the week.


This species of sea anemone was first discovered and described by one of the professors on our trip, Dr. Hamner. He didn't go on this dive with us, but he certainly recognized them in our pictures. These anemones are unique in the fact that they will catch and eat entire fish. Their surface looks like any other sea anemone, so anemone fish (clownfish, etc.) see this and decide to make it a home. They cozy up to it and start getting comfortable in their new digs. Meanwhile, the anemone slowly starts to curl up and around the fish. Its walls are entirely clear, so the fish doesn't realize it's being enclosed until it's too late. At that point, the only exit is up, but fish instinctually look for exits to the side whenever they're evading prey. It obviously can't find any, and the anemone eventually smothers the fish and eats it.


The butterfly fish in this picture are an excellent example of disruptive coloration. They have dark blue or black faces which disappear in front of a dark backdrop like deep canyons or the open ocean. Predators will either see a headless fish or they'll aim for the tail thinking it's the fish's head, and the fish will be able to swim away.


This is a view of the edge of a reef from a depth of about 30 feet. The top of the reef flat itself is only about 2-3 feet underwater, so it's a long way down to where I am. As you can see, even the deep water is very blue in Moorea. (While these pictures have been color-corrected on the computer, there wasn't enough light for the camera to record much besides blue. Luckily it's a very pretty blue.)

Yesterday morning we went snorkeling in Opunohu Bay (the next bay over from ours). Dr. Jacobs of Transect of Tears and Snorkel of Stings fame said he heard there was a great reef out by the navigation markers in the middle of the bay. Fifteen minutes of swimming later, there was no reef to be found. We swam all the way back and instead putzed around the little reef on the shoreline while one of our TAs, Sandy, gathered coral and crab samples for her doctoral research. We're still in the process of coming up with a cute name for that little excursion (Foray of Futility?).


If you've ever wondered what a pufferfish looks like when it's deflated, here you go.

They're really rather cute - chubby cheeks and a bashful little smile.


The green stuff in this picture is Halimeda spp., a type of algae that can actually contribute more to reef-building than the corals themselves. Halimeda spp. has a calcareous skeleton under that greenery - think of them as little photosynthetic chips of chalk. They grow faster than coral and leave hundreds of calcium carbonate flakes behind when they die, which then get cemented into the reef along with the coral.

Last night the station put on a Polynesian feast for us, where they cooked a lot of traditional Polynesian dishes for us (very good, though their cuisine is quite heavy on the starches), kicked our butts at volleyball (a Polynesian pasttime - makeshift courts are all over the island, including in our front yard), and taught us how to do Polynesian dance. Or at least tried to teach us Polynesian dance. I really don't think any of us could get our hips going as fast as even the six-year-old girl.

Today we went to the giant waterfall on the other side of the island.


It was about a 40 minute hike through dense rainforest and rather high humidity.


It was, obviously, worth it. There was a small pool at the base of the falls that we frolicked in, despite the fact that the water was freezing.


If you've ever wondered what looking up a waterfall looks like, here you go. Of course, I was busy shielding my head from the pounding water with my other arm when I took this - you saw how tall these falls are!

I can't post a lot of the pictures with people in them for various reasons, so perhaps you can see them when I get back. Perhaps. I assure you, however, that much fun was had by all.