French Frigate Shoals day three

Today we started out at a new wreck called the "Churchill". This ship was on its way to California from Tonga carrying some sort of cargo. It crashed on a reef during the first world war in 1917. Now the ship was said to have accidentally crashed into the reef up here in French Frigate Shoals, but there is an interesting controversy about it. The ship had a German National as its captain so there were a lot of people that thought he crashed it on purpose. There was not enough evidence to actually show that he crashed it purposely so he was exonerated. When we first got there, Derek said that he had to collect coral samples so I could just swim around and enjoy the dive. But! as soon as he saw the ridiculous amount of fish on this wreck he gave me a slate and said "write down everything you see." Look at the picture above and you can get a small idea of the scene that I had. It was a little overwhelming, but again, I am learning. There were fish that not only did I now know what species they were, but i had NO IDEA what type of fish they were (i.e. tang, butterfly, damsel), or really if they were a fish at all (ok not really)!!! Here is an example of one of my descriptions, "chub-like fish with black spots, white center, and gray outside", or my favorite the "WTF damselfish." It is a good thing I brought the guide book on the boat with me. The dive was super cool though. There was so much life and all different parts of the bow of the boat scattered everywhere. We even found a toilet. Apparently, the team is still looking for the stern of the boat. After 1 dive on the Churchill we went back to Shark's Island to do one more set of transects. While we were conducting some very important ecology, the maritime archeology team found 3 more harpoon tips and a dagger! This was an amazing find because they were lucky to even find one. The team was really excited all day. While they were off finding once in a lifetime artifacts, I was being stalked by 3 very big ulua... Those guys are sooooo curious. Anne was working the rugosity chain and ended up dropping it a few times because they really seem to like shiny things. In any event, it was a great day! We have two travel days coming up because we are now heading over to Lisianski Atoll.

cheers!
Nyssa