Friday, August 6, 2010

Fishy Friday - U of. Guam President and Barracuda Rock

Hi all!

(Derek [Flipper]with a dazzling butterfly who must have been injured or sick, because it did not fly away! -->)

Friday we met with the president of the University of Guam. He was a nice and we had a nice talk about academics vs. politics. Once again, we were told that Palau is going to mind blowing. I am SO excited!

Afterwards, we ate some food at the marine lab and headed out to the dock to load up on the same boat.

Our first dive was at Barracuda Rock in the open ocean. It's called that because of a large exposed rock on the surface of the water that looks like a barracuda head. The current was pretty strong here and there were significant waves. I was wary about the dive because of this. I was expecting to use up a lot of energy and air.

Underwater the current wasn't as bad as I expected. We laid out our 100 meter transect line and counted fishies and inverts, just like yesterday. Man, we are pretty dang good at this. We got in trouble though for picking up the transect tape while winding it in, rather than just leaving the end tied down and spinning the tape into the measure while swimming back. Oopsies, oh well!

Then we explored a bit. I saw Nemo! I also saw lots of butterfly fish, which have a cool geometric design on their bodies, of white lines crisscrossing. A lot of fishies swim back really fast into holes in the ground or the coral when we swim near, it's so funny! We swam through a tunnel under the big barracuda head rock, and then Jennah showed up and motioned for us to follow her back to the boat to ascend. On the way back, Kirby started making exaggerated pointing motions to something behind me... I turned... and saw... a

SHARK !!!!!

It was maybe four feet long, idk it was far away (sorry for the bold btw, it won't undo now that I've done it. oops). So cool! It was definitely Bruce from Finding Nemo.

We ascended and headed to our next dive side, this time in the wharf. It was Western Shoals, where our second Guam dive took place. I misspelled that earlier.

we had to lay a transect here at 20 meters, and the stupid tape measure jammed up at about 30 m out. I took it and wound it around itself and we decided as a group to use the 30 ft line as a reference and to swim about 20 ft deep. Eh, I guess it worked. Oh, and my pencil was broken before I even made it all the way down, so I was essentially useless. Awesome.

I was a bit frustrated, but that's ok. The ship mate Chase told us that we would find a lazy sea turtle down there. I definitely didn't see that and I told him that I was upset. :[ I did see lots of Gill fishies from Finding Nemo, thanks for the correction Kristin, so that was cool! But no turtle :[ (P.S. Yay! The bold type has gone away!)
(<-- that's Kirby) We came back to shore and it began to rain on us again. We unloaded everything and left, got groceries, and headed to the marine lab house to have a BBQ. The neighbors were already using the grill, which was nice because we didn't have to start it up then. But we did have to wait for them for quite a while.
(Bridget McD, the other Bridget -->)
We had Casey Quon's (aka Pearl) AHmazing Korean potato dish. OMG so so so good! And super healthy! AND you can make the dish with sweet potatoes, one of my most favoritist foods in the world, instead of potatoes. Um, yes. AND Derek Lazo--excuse me, Flipper--made his delicious steak dish. Yum yum yum. We never grilled the eggplant or corn like we wanted to, but I was not hungry at that point.

I also was hurriedly moving plates and dishes and things around and I accidentally.... knock Jim Haw's half-full expensive gin to the ground. Crack. Break. Splash. FAIL.

I felt horrible.

Everyone "ooo-ed" and "ahh-ed" at me, then tried to console me, saying accidents happen, it's ok, worse things could have happened. I'm such a klutz! I'll admit, as I'm writing this right now, it's the next day and I have been banned from the kitchen. Walking into the house, I was informed that I am not welcome in the kitchen and wary stares led me to sit far, far away on the other side of the room. Hehe. Oopsies.

We had a great time eating (and quenching our thirst ;D ) and talking with each other. There was definitely some bonding going on. I was sitting on a hammock under the stars (stars which I have never seen before in the Midwest), next to Christine, talking with my peeps, loving life. There was only one problem: bugs. I was nearly eaten alive, though not so much because my bug bite are itchy yet small. Poor Christine, her bug bite are HUGE. I think her body is more sensitive to the bites, because they are probably five times bigger on her than on me. Whoa. Poor girl. Really, it's pretty nasty.

Most of the group left, and it was just me, Sabrina, Flipper, Lauren, and David Ginsburg (professor). We had some nice talks and had a bunch of fun.

AND David showed us the ladder to the roof of the marine lab. OOPS should I not say that? Hehe oh well.

That is all. G'nite, B

1 comment:

  1. Hi Bridget,

    I already checked on Glen and Lester once - we miss you soooooo much!!!!!!!! Your dad wants to know if you found Robert in your textbook?

    Love,

    Sydney :)

    ReplyDelete