The Real Death Snorkel

Today Prof. Jacobs got the bright idea to do a series of sediment samples in an area of high flow, from the reef crest to the lagoon between the reef and the shore. Well, he wasn't kidding about the high flow - it was clocked at anything from 30cm/sec to 5m/sec, and pretty much no one in the class swims that fast, even the water polo girls. It turned into a bit of a fiasco, the details of which I'm too tired to discuss, but suffice to say that we all made it back more or less alive and Dr. Jacobs has been dropped from the majority of our Christmas lists.

After we made it back, Wil and I set up the lab while the rest finished getting sediment samples from the reef site or went to the bank. After lunch, it was my turn to go on a bank run with a bunch of other people. Originally, the plan had been to quickly go to the bank and the supermarchet and then come back to the station for another trip to Death Snorkel, but we quickly vetoed that when my companions and I saw the store, ice cream stand, pastry shop, post office,, fruit stand, and, of course, the grocery stores. So we ended up not going to Death Snorkel, which explains why I do not have any pictures from today. Instead, I have some pictures from yesterday's snorkeling joyride, taken on the north shore of the island between Cook's Bay and Oponuahu Bay.

So we were snorkeling around, all of us taking pictures of whatever we saw, when someone found a hitchhiker on a floating piece of coconut shell. The fish is obviously a juvenile, but I haven't been able to figure out exactly what it is yet. When Mark held the shell for me to take the picture, the fish refused to leave its shelter. In fact, as Mark kept screwing around with the shell for a few of his own pictures, the fish finally got fed up enough and attacked. Of course, for a baby fish like this one, "attacking" pretty much entails swimming straight at Mark for a little bit, hoping that he might startle him. It worked.


This guy was burrowed into a hole in a little patch of rock and coral in only about 10 feet of water. Pretty cool.


That's about it for now. My computer battery is running out of juice, and I broke the plug by my bed (long story), so I have to go. I'll try to have a longer post and new pictures tomorrow.