French Frigate Shoals round 2!

Hi Guys,
We pulled back into French Frigate Shoals yesterday morning for our second visit. We have a total of 3.5 more days here. We started our second visit back over at sharks island yesterday morning. It was beautiful. There was practically no swell and barely any wind. We spent our first dive looking for a data logger that Derek had put out so that we could take some pictures; making it easier to find next year. Simultaneously, Anne and I were swimming around trying to find some new artifacts for the team. The archeology team really wants to find the ships bell. After one dive, we spent the rest of the day snorkeling in the shallows looking for artifacts. It was a pretty light day for us. Today I got traded to the invasive species team again. One of the divers wasn't feeling well and there are only two divers on that team so I stood in for him. I had a lot of fun. We spent the entire day searching for lobsters for one of the other grad students in my department. I was really excited because I spent an entire summer in the keys helping out a lobster biologist. Finally, I was asked to do something I am good at! lol. Anyways, these guys are really hard to find up here. My advisor and I found 5, but we only caught 3. I felt like I was mini cavern diving because the lobsters like small cracks in the rocks. So, in order to catch them you had to wiggle yourself into little swim through's and cracks in the coral structure and then reach your real far and hope for an antenna! I wish I could have taken a picture (I left my camera on the boat for this) because we looked really funny with our feet dangling out in the air..err...water. Anyways, 2 more days here and them off to Nihoa!

Cheers,
Nyssa

Midway day 2 and 3

Yesterday I had the day off! Woohoo! And I was on land which was awesome. My friends and I went and toured around Midway for the day. Let me give you a little information about Midway atoll. First and foremost it is a wildlife refuge mostly for birds and monk seals. There are a ridiculous amount of birds here. I am not exaggerating when I tell you there are thousands and thousands of Laysan Albatross (at least one per square meter). This time of year there are young chicks and subadults on the island. The chicks are big, brown, and really fluffy and they can't fly yet. Their parents are off at sea collecting food for about another month or so and these birds literally sit in the spot they hatched and just wait. They don't move in inch. You could run up to them and they will just sit their and stare at you. It is totally bizzare! The subadults are really funny. They are constantly practicing their mating dances with each other so that when the time is right they have it down perfect. Their dance starts out with them clapping their beaks together several times, then they shake their head no, then shake their head yes, then stick their head up in the air and howl. They practice either with just one other bird or in groups.
We started the morning off with a 2 hour bike ride on a beach cruiser. It was awesome to be out on a bike riding around and move more than 100 feet. Bike riding was pretty comical though because like I said there are birds EVERYWHERE so you have to weave all over the place not to hit them. Then we went and laid out on the most gorgeous beach I have ever been to in my life (I was trying to get rid of this wetsuit tan, but one day just wont cut it). At the end of the day we went over to the "All hands club", which is a totally empty bar that has pool tables, shuffle board, and ping pong and then walked to North Beach and watched the sunset. It was a great day off.
Today was a little rough. The seas were up and it was really stormy. We ended up calling our first two dives of the day because none of us wanted to get in the water the way that it was. Luckily, on the opposite side of the island the waves were not that bad so we jumped in there. Under the water was amazing. No swell or current. Just total calm. Once was I down I did not want to come back up to the stormy surface. It is pretty amazing how calm the conditions can be if you just drop down a few feet under water. Anyways, we are all stuck on the ship for the next three days because we are transiting back the French Frigate Shoals again on our way back to Honolulu.

Midway day 1

So yesterday was incredible! We arrived at Midway atoll early in the morning and started the day off like usual. Get up at 6am. Get our gear ready, eat, get on the boat, and go diving. Midway atoll is a special place for those of us on this ship because it is the only place that we can touch land. Our first dive of the morning was on a wreck called the "Carolton." This ship was carrying coal from Australia to California and wrecked here in 1906. This was a really pretty dive. It was really shallow and in only 10 feet of water (and therefore SUPER surgey), but there were thousands of beautiful fish and awesome looking rock formations. The great thing about this dive is that I just got to go along for the ride! The archeology team was just checking it out to see if the pieces have moved around at all in the surf. Next we went and snorkeled around near shore looking for a landing vessel that crashed during WWII. We were looking around for over an hour and couldn't find it which was really weird because we were in clear, shallow water looking for a 35 foot plank. The chief scientist called in and asked for GPS points and found out that the park service over here actually removed it from the water... whoopsies! Finally, we motored over to a spot called the "Corsair" which as of now was the most amazing dive I have EVER been on. This is a plane the crashed here at Midway during WWII (remember the battle of Midway?). This plane crashed in 120 feet of water and therefore this was a very deep dive. When you dive to this depth you need to be very careful because you breath your air 4x faster than you would at the surface and you are at much higher risk for getting bent if you are not careful. Lucky for me, I was diving with 2 dive instructors and 2 other amazingly competent divers and I have a lot of experience working at deeper depths. We dropped down to this plane wreck which was gorgeous. It was in a sand patch with nothing around it, but it was filled with hundreds and hundreds of fish. My job was to write down everything that I saw again. I saw a lot of new species because all our other sites were really shallow. Anyways, at the end of the dive we had to come up very very slowly because of the depth. As we start coming up the first thing we saw was a school of about 20 Galapagos sharks. They were so beautiful. They were pretty small (only 3-4 feet) and just peacefully swimming around in the water column (the galapagos shark is the first picture). We were all enjoying our ride up, taking pictures of all the sharks and hanging out in the middle of the water column. After about 5 minutes or so we got up to about 40 feet. I kept my eye on my dive computer because I wanted to make sure that I was not coming up too fast. As I look up from my computer, I looked over at all my buddies (there were 5 of us) and they were all staring at me with huge eyes. I thought that was kind of weird because none of them were signally anything to me, but they were just stunned. So I turned around and saw this MASSIVE female tiger shark inches from me (literally) just checking me out. Totally calm and non-aggressive, but ridiculously close! I think I said some expletives through my regulator and then realized that I had a camera and had to take a picture (picture number two). It was so cool. People spend their entire life diving and don't get experiences like this. After our safety stop we all came to the surface and were in total shock just laughing about what had just happened. Now don't get me wrong I never want to see one of those guys while I am floating around on the surface of the water, but while diving it was a totally amazing experience. After the dive we pulled into the dock and touched land for the first time in 13 days . And since we were on land we were allowed to have a beer (woohoo!)! Needless to say I definitely toasted with my dive team to that crazy experience. Today I have a day off and I am going to tour around the island. Will post pictures later!

Until tomorrow,
Nyssa

Kure Day 2

Today we did a whole lot of running around. We started out back at the Dunnattor Castle again to run a few transects. The winds died down which was nice, but it was still cloudy and really cold. After a dive on the D. Castle, we went over to a new wreck that the side scan sonar guys found. Only the archeology team got in the water here though. Next, we went for another dive on the Parker. Derek found some new parts to this wreck so we ended up staying there for a while. We then went to a sailboat that wrecked in the lagoon called the Grendel. This is kind of a sad story. It was captained by a 79 year old man that solo sailed across the Pacific. Apparently, he was lost at sea and his sailboat just showed up here with all his stuff still in it. The family signed the boat over to the state so that they can remove it from the monument and return all his personal belongings back to the family. Finally, at the end of the day we went to a reef near the D. Castle to take some control transects. Sorry that this post is kind of short and sweet. I'm pretty beat after 8 days of straight diving and we are doing a very deep dive tomorrow morning so I need to get to bed early! Tomorrow we arrive at Midway atoll!

Cheers,
Nyssa

Kure day 1

Today we arrived in Kure, the most northern coral reef atoll in the world. The day started out a little rough. It was storming in the morning so our launch got delayed a little bit. We started out at a wreck called the "Dunnottar Castle." This is another huge wreck. It was collier carrying coal to California from Australia and crashed up here in the NWHI in 1886. It was trying to make a speed record and clearly did not make it. Unfortunately, because it was so rough in the morning, I could not really see much of the wreck because it was all turned up. We are going back tomorrow though so hopefully I can get a better look. We did two dives on the D. Castle and then went into the lagoon of the atoll and went to another wreck called the "Parker". By this time the storm had died and it actually turned into a gorgeous day. It was raining when we jumped into the water, but when we came out it was like we were in a totally different place! The water was like a lake it was so calm and clear! You could see huge schools of manini (see video above) and lots of other really cool fish. The Parker was another Whaling vessel heading to the Japanese fishing grounds (do you see a trend here???). And they allllmost made it because the Japanese fishing grounds are only a few miles from here. But, they crashed during a big storm and the ship broke up into a million pieces and went everywhere. We are going to a few more wrecks in Kure tomorrow so until then!
Nyssa

Pearl and Hermes day 2

We started off our morning by visiting "The Pearl". The Pearl is the oldest known shipwreck in Hawaiian waters. We didn't conduct any research at this site but the archeologists thought it would be fun for us to go snorkel on it for a few minutes since it is an important historical site. After snorkeling around for about 20 minutes we made our way back to the "Quartet." The morning started out kind of rough. The swells picked up a little bit today so we were getting tossed around quite a bit during our first dive. I tried to take some video so that I could show you guys what we look like (Derek is on the photoquardrat and Anne is doing rugostisy). I waited for the surge to calm down when I took the video so that my camera would not get beat up. So when you are watching this realize that this is our crew working during the "calm" part of the dive... The next two dives were much better because we were in deeper water. Still a little surgey, but we were not getting tossed around like we were on our first dive. All in all it was another fun and successful day out on the water. We arrive at Kure atoll bright and early tomorrow morning (the northernmost coral reef on an atoll)!

Pearl and Hermes day 1

Early this morning we arrived at Pearl and Hermes atoll. This atoll was named after two shipwrecks called the Pearl and the Hermes. Both of these whaling vessels were traveling together and crashed in the 1850's during a big storm. The wreck that we went and looked at today is called the Quartet. The Quartet is a more contemporary shipwreck. The Quartet was a liberty vessel, heading towards Korea, that carried corn and other grains. It crashed onto the reef in the 1950's during the Korean War. The Quartet is a beautiful wreck. It was 462 feet long (which is twice the length of the ship that I am on now). Half of the ship made it over the reef crest into the lagoon while the other half stayed on the fore reef. We only dove around the stern end so that our boat would not turn into a shipwreck on this reef as well. There was a huge propeller, a massive steam engine, and lots and lots of other metal parts laying on the reef. There were more fish on this wreck than I have ever seen in my entire life. And some crazy looking ones that I have never seen. Before I looked them up, I couldn't even tell you what family they were in let alone the species name. For example, one of the fish looked like a zebra with a mow-hawk... I kid you not! One of the other neat things about this dive is that it was in about 30 feet of water, so we were not getting beat-up on the surface by the waves and surge. Needless to say, today was an awesome day. I think the Quartet is the prettiest wreck that I have seen on this trip so far. Tomorrow we are going to do a quick dive on the Pearl and the Hermes and then we are going to go back to the Quartet.

Until tomorrow!
Nyssa