A Hospitable Holiday

Well, we got the next week's work schedule today, and I'm gonna be busy for a while... I'm working 9.5 hours (at least - there's a 13 hour shift in there too) every day until the 28th, with the 23rd off. Still, I wouldn't exactly call the work pure drudgery. I've been to visit the Stingrays and the North Reef almost every day I've been here (four times so far, with another five scheduled for next week). I've also been doing programs on reef surveys, underwater photography (one of my favorites so far), sailing, night snorkeling, and I'm even playing/refereeing a game of bocce ball on Friday as part of the hotel's holiday activities.

On my days off I've been relaxing a bit (I get outside plenty on my workdays, so my breaks are pretty boring in comparison). I went snorkeling again in the reef just off Port Royale, and I'm pretty happy with how some of the pictures turned out.


I'm starting to think that cinder blocks may actually grow naturally in tropical waters. In both Moorea and Arrecife, I see them around a lot, and they never seem to have any problems finding tenants. This particular one has a balloonfish in one of the holes (top right). As the name implies, balloonfish are capable of inflating themselves when threatened, causing the spines all over their bodies to extend, making them a lot less appetizing to predators.


This is a close-up shot of the Corky Sea Finger - and at this point I'd like to remind you all that I do not come up with these names - which is a type of coral. In this picture, the polyps are extended, though they are typically retracted during the day for protection. This particular species is an octocoral, meaning that each polyp has eight tentacles. Like any other coral, they have symbiotic algae in their tissues that produce food during the day (as well as the brown color of their polyps), and they wait for night to extend the tentacles shown here to catch plankton in the water.