Lisianski day 2.5

Ok, today was by far the coolest day yet. I went out with the alien species team again. Scott took us to this BEAUTIFUL reef on the east side of Neva shoals. There was probably 95% coral cover and all sorts of other wild life. The water was flat, the sun was out, and there was absolutely no surge. I saw my first Acanthaster! For those who don't know it is a crown of thorns seastar. This seastar eats coral and has recently become a major problem in the indo-pacific . It is not a problem in Hawaii though. During our safety stop I felt like the ocean was putting on a show for us. Out of no where a huge school of barracuda came by and started circling us. Massive ulua joined in of course and a monk seal came by to say hello. The monk seal also followed us up to the boat and checked us out on the surface for a while (I promise I never moved even an inch in its direction. It came straight to me!). For our second dive, Scott took us to a rubble field so that I could look for bioeroding organisms for my project. We found more species of worms than I could ever imagine, some bivalves, and of course lots of boring sponges (that's boring as in a bore hole, not yawn boring). Scott let me bring some back to the lab and look at them under the microscope which was really cool. It also made me very aware of the crazy work I am about to get myself into because identifying these critters is really really difficult. After I got a good look at them we returned then back to where they belonged. We only got two dives in today because we had to get back to the boat as early as we could. We stayed at Lisianski an extra day because of all the wrecks that the monument team found, but we needed to start driving to our next spot so that we could have the two full days there that we had planned. Tomorrow morning I will be at Pearl and Hermes Reef!

See you at the next atoll!
Nyssa