On Shooting Fish

As an update to last week's post, I'm back on solid foods again, so that little crisis has officially passed.

Secondly, it's photo time again! I've spent the last few days on an assortment of scuba diving expeditions with my friend Ollie, so here's the first batch:


Mustard Hill Coral with Sea Fans


This is a juvenile Yellowtail Damselfish, sans yellow tail (that will come when the fish gets older). You can also see the tips of the spines of a Diadema urchin, close relative to the urchins I researched in Moorea.


At this point you've seen a few pictures of coral on this blog, right? Well you may have noticed that in all of the photos, the coral has looked quite hard and rocky. I know I've promised that coral is an animal and that it is related to sea anemones and jellies, but there's been little to no visual evidence of this... until now. Behold the products of Monday's night dive:




These pictures are both of the same kind of coral seen in the daytime photo above. Obviously they're a little more interesting at night. You can definitely see the physical resemblance to sea anemones, and the idea that these guys actively catch plankton is probably a little more believable.


This is a Balloonfish, a type of pufferfish - note the spines.


This is a Yellowline Arrow Crab that I saw crawling around one of the coral heads. To give you a sense of scale, the central body (tip of the long snout to its rear, not including legs) is about 1.5 inches. Being so spindly, this is obviously not the kind of crab you'll see on the Winchester-Swann menu.

On Arson, Dentistry, and Lockjaw

Before getting into today's story, here's our CAOS staff photo, taken when Jean-Michel was visiting. I'm on the right in the front row, with Jean-Michel just behind me.



But enough of that - time for today's feature presentation. So on Sunday the inside of my cheek started hurting, right next to my upper right wisdom tooth. I felt around and scoped it out with a flashlight, and decided that my wisdom tooth was trying to claw its way out of my mouth through the cheek. It made sense, considering it was only my cheek that was hurting, and the fact that my wisdom tooth is newer than any of the others and is therefore sharper and more likely to cause damage when I bit the inside of my cheek. Also, my wisdom teeth have been in for a full year, so it's not like I'm teething or anything.

By Monday I couldn't open my mouth more than a quarter to a half inch between my teeth - apparently not an issue with biting my cheek. My boss was kind enough to give me the afternoon off (also, it was raining and we canceled many of our programs), so I hunted down a dentist to have a look-see and figure out what on earth was going on in there. Most dentists didn't have space to see me that day, but I managed to find one that squeezed me in just before closing time. (For the record, she's highly recommended, US-trained, and accepts the Winchester-Swann's health insurance plan, so it's not as sketchy as some - you know who you are - might fear.) I forget what her final diagnosis was (some fancy-sounding Latin name), but the gist of it was that I had developed an infection in the vicinity of the wisdom tooth, which had spread to the surrounding jaw muscles and made them tense up. She wrote me a prescription for antibiotics and painkillers and sent me on my merry way.

By Tuesday my coworkers knew about my mysterious affliction and mealtimes with Andrea had become a popular spectator sport. I had to place myself on a diet of oatmeal and soup, and even those didn't always pan out so well, as I went from one of the tidiest diners to something akin to a toddler. The antibiotics were helping and the painkillers took the edge off, but eating was still a tedious process.

Naturally, I went out to dinner that night. My roommates and I found a rather nice Mongolian BBQ place on 17 Mile - the closest we've found to cheap, good Asian food on the island (emphasis on the cheap). Caroline and Kristal were treated to a double feature that night - Andrea with "lockjaw" AND trying to eat with chopsticks! (Actually by that time I could pry my mouth open to about 3/4 inches of clearance, but it was still kind of funny for all of us.)

We were driving back from dinner when I saw this huge plume of smoke in the sky. It almost looked as though it were coming from... the empty lot right behind our apartment? Great. We walked around to the back of the house and were relieved to see that it was actually in an empty lot BEHIND the empty lot behind our house. Because there isn't much else to do in Arrecife on a Tuesday night, we grabbed our cameras and flashlights and went to get a closer look. We hiked through the underbrush until we reached the clearing of the second lot, where we saw three large piles of brush and debris ablaze. Just then someone shined a bright flashlight at us and a voice demanded to know what we were doing there. After assuring him that no, we didn't start the fire, that the fire'd been burning since... well anyway, you get the idea. The man introduced himself as the owner of the lot. He said that he had hired a backhoe to clear the brush and put it into piles earlier that day, and that he had no idea who had started the fires, having already ruled out the possibility of simultaneous spontaneous combustion. The five of us then stood around and watched the Arrecife fire trucks try to find a way through the trees and houses to put the fires out. The fire department eventually gave up on the trucks and a few guys just hopped the fence with a long hose. We went home soon thereafter as we weren't interested in a shower courtesy of the Arrecife FD.




On the way home we found a couple of these guys on the wall next to the pool. Apparently they wanted to see the show too. Can't say I blame them.

On Men of Myth and Legend

It's been a while. My last post was on March 22nd, and I swear we have been crazy-busy ever since, which explains the notable lack of photos in this post. The past few days alone I have worked 8am-10pm virtually every day on programs at or over capacity. We have set attendance and profit records on each of the past four consecutive days. Why is that, you ask? Well there are two reasons: 1, kidlets nationwide have been on spring and Easter breaks, and 2, a certain Famous Oceanographer has been visiting us! That's right, Jean-Michel Cousteau came to visit our CAOS program, raise money and awareness for his Ocean Futures Society, and generally allow us to bathe in his aura of awesomeness.

Particularly exciting was going on a night snorkel with him. Granted, I was stuck being safety kayak for the trip (not actually getting in the water at the same time), but I still managed to make my mark. When Raab came and visited us last month, I showed him the plankton traps I made and used in my research in Moorea (the ones made of slice-and-diced soda bottles) and he had expressed interest in using them for other CAOS programs. Since then we've been using them on a regular basis on all of our night snorkels to allow us to show guests the sorts of plankton they've been swimming in throughout the program. Well, Raab had told Jean-Michel about these traps, so when Raab introduced me to him, the conversation went a little like this:

Raab: "This is Andrea. She's the one who came up with those plankton traps I was telling you about."
Cousteau: "Oh excellent! So good to meet you! You know, I think we're going to start using these traps at our other [CAOS] locations as well. In fact, I think it would work well with our research in the Amazon."
Andrea: "EEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!"

Okay, that last part was just in my head - I like to think I was considerably more eloquent than that. But you have to understand, THIS IS A BIG DEAL. There are CAOS programs worldwide, and they're all going to start using the UCLA bottle traps! The fact that there were all sorts of AWESOME plankton during our night snorkel just added to my string of good luck and brownie points with Cousteau and Raab (the first time Raab saw the traps was the only other time I have seen so much plankton in the water or I have seen the traps catch so much cool stuff). All in all, I'm pretty happy with myself, and perhaps more than a little starstruck (figures I would get more excited over the aging oceanographer than the young starlets we get through the hotel). I'll resume picture-taking on my days off once I finally GET a day off and have recovered from all this hubbub.


Oh and Happy Easter!