Monkey Mia Dolphin Resort

I have finally had the chance to upload some pictures of Monkey Mia, The work we are doing and the surrounding area.  The winds continue to blow and we are running out of shore work.  The forecast doesn’t look great either.  I can’t wait to get back on the water for some more diving and GoPro camera deployments.  A few days of rest is always relaxing but the novelty wears off quickly and then I am antsy to get back to work. 

Around the Resort

No caption needed

The Trailer Park.  Everything in the green fence is ours.

Adriana and I at the entrance

Our homely little gathering place

My Shitbox

This one was dead... phew! (taken by Adriana Weil)

Dancing in the dunes (taken by Adriana Weil)

Night Time

Nightshot on the beach

So many stars

One more for the night.

Halloween

Kirks looking clean

The Jellyfish

Airport flagger and the jellyfish.

An International Power Strip.

...And a Couple More

Making a Monkey of Myself at Monkey Mia with a Monkey tail Mustache

The Whole Crew; Adriana Weil, AnnaRose Adams, Fanny Vessaz, Tyler Roberts, Jordy Thomson and Kirk Gastrich.

Turtling

It has been a busy couple weeks and we finally have a stretch of some windy weather to give us a little down time.  The work has been some of the most fun I have ever had.  We began by doing some hookah scuba diving and cleaning out underwater exclosure cages.  The cages keep out grazers and small fish that eat the sea grass and the experiment uses several combinations of different sized wire mesh to determine just how each class of grazers affects the grasses.  Working on it has been hard but fun. We dive for 2-6 hours in a day and  often for longer than 2 hours at a time.  This is definitely not your recreational diving but i have been having a great time with it none-the-less.

Another side to that project is building and maintaining the cages.  We have been sawing through tons of the mesh and building the cages on the surface before setting them up underwater.  This is probably the most hazardous thing we have been doing because as you saw tiny metal shards are sent flying all over the place.  Don't worry because its always safety first and we don't rush or take and stupid chances.  However you do invariably end up with a lot of little pokes and welts.  I love it.  It makes me feel like I have really been working hard and accomplishing something if I end up sore and a little bruised at the end of the day.  Remember the feeling when you were a child running around outside all day getting scraped up, dirty and exhausted?  Its that same feeling that I get working here.  Every scrape has a story and almost always a funny one.

As for the turtle wrangling aspect of the job, there is nothing in the world quite like it.  Ive only caught a couple myself but its amazing.  It begins by cruising around in the boat and just looking for turtles.  My first thought was that this couldn't possibly work very often but that was before I found out just how many turtles are in Shark Bay.  The feeling on the boat is usually quite reserved and silent aside from the occasional tension relieving jokes.  You could call it the calm before the storm because once you do spot that turtle things happen fast.  One person hops up on the bow and holds on to a rope much like the reins on a horse.  Jordy is superb captain and maneuvers the boat just right to get you alongside the turtle.  As the person on the bow your heart is racing as you contemplate jumping down into the water directly on top of a massive and extremely powerful reptile with one very large beak on its head.

Those few seconds just before Jordy flips the boat into neutral and gives you the go ahead can feel like hours as the adrenaline pulses through your body.  Finally the moment is right and you send yourself careening down onto the beasts back.  Now if the water is shallow enough all you need to do is get a good hold on it, point it up and stand up but in the deeper water everything gets a bit trickier. Either way there is always someone else on board the boat just waiting to jump in and help if needed and help is usually needed.  The boat gets anchored and we bring the turtle around back where we use a harness and winch or just some good old fashioned elbow grease to get it up on board.  Measurements are taken, tags are applied and the GoPro camera package is set in place on its back.  This is all done in as efficient a manner as possible to reduce the amount of stress put on the turtle.  Of course jumping on its back in the water might seem like an aggressive way to get it in the first place but the truth is that it has the least impact.  With nets and entanglement is common and often harms the animal.  We put our turtles back in as good a shape as before we captured them, only with a few more temporary accessories or turtle bling.  The whole process from capture to release takes about 30 minutes. 

The camera package is attached with 4 hour dissolving links so the next day we are back out in the water locating and picking up tags.  It is a lot of fun to watch the videos of turtles you have caught.  You get to know them a little and they all have quite unique personalities.  We have accumulated quite a bit of data already and are making great steps into understanding the foraging habits of both Green and Loggerhead Turtles.  I love being a science nerd.

Sweet Home Monkey Mia

As always there is more to write about than I can possibly express so I'll start from the beginning.  36 hours of travel was bit rough, especially with a headcold.  Mostly I just felt bad for everyone sitting next to me on the planes.  The Australian airline Qantas was very nice made the trip much more relaxing although i was far from relaxed knowing that i would soon be in Australia.  Once in Perth I met up with my coworker Adriana and we flew to Monkey Mia together.  She is so enthusiastic and happy all the time that it is completely contagious and even after all that travel I was so energized to be here.  I mean almost to the point of shaking from excitement.  I am quite sure the other people on that last flight must have thought we were completely bonkers.

We arrived at the resort with high expectations that were immediately confirmed and then vastly exceeded within minutes.  For most of that first day I was simply in shock of the raw beauty and incredibly foreign land.  Red sand covers the ground with an outrageously blue ocean extending into the horizon.  The beach is border between the two and it is composed of pure white crushed shells which only enhances the contrast between the land and water.  After a little tour around and meeting some of the folks who work here I went to bed with an aching face from the smile that had been plastered on me all day.

The next morning was like waking up to realize that its Christmas.  I shot out of bed busted open the door out my trailer, lovingly nicknamed "The Shitbox".  It's really not that bad, plus i get it to myself while the other assistants are in bunk beds together.  The last member of the team, Kirk, arrived around noon and we all hung out and got to know one another a little better.  I had met Jordy, Kirk and Adriana during my time in Miami but Fanny and AnnaRose were new.  They had both been here for a couple weeks already and helped to explain the ropes to us.  Fanny is from the French side of Switzerland and just about the sweetest girl you can imagine.  AnnaRose is from Ashland, Oregon and went to school at Oregon state. Naturally there was an immediately established and good humored  rivalry between us, Ducks vs Beavers. Of course the Ducks win.  All in all I could not ask for a better group to with.

That night we celebrated the beginning of the season at the Monkey Bar and what a celebration it was.  Many bottles of wine later we all went to bed happy as Turtles at high tide.  This morning was bit slower and also a bit too windy to do any work out on the water so we took it easy and hung out on the beach all day.  While Kirk, Adriana and I were all in the water throwing a ball around some starts shouting at us "Shark...Shark" as they point wildly to a spot out 100 meters from us.  We all turn to see a massive Tiger Shark Thrashing about just at the edge of the sea grass beds.  Adriana and I watched somewhat apprehensively while Kirk actually goes strolling out towards it. He got within 30 meters from it to watch  it devouring some unfortunate creature.  The Jaw theme was playing in my head the whole time.  This shark was no Great White but it was 3-3.5 meters long and that is damn big.

Today was also my birthday so tonight my team baked me a little cake and gave me one of the best birthday presents I have ever received, Which is just being here in this place and at this time with them.  I really could not ask for more.  At the moment my heart feels like the Grinch's when he carves up the roast beast.  It has swelled to over ten times its size.  True happiness may be fleeting but when you've got it there is nothing in this world that can bring you down.

An Auspicious Occasion

"The best journeys answer questions that in the beginning you didn't even think to ask."

- Jeff Johnson, 180° South -

I've been in Oregon the last few days reorganizing my gear and hanging out with my brother.  Its a nice farewell to be leaving from one of the friendliest towns in the US.  I am starting to drop back into travel mode now.  I am ready to roll with the punches, excited to meet new people and to take it all in.  Four flights, a train ride, 10,000 miles and 20 hours later I will be sunning on a beach in Western Australia.

I will be greatly missing the national holidays that I have come to love so much.  Thanksgiving is always a good time filled to the brim with great food.  Before leaving Chicago my family and I did have a nice mock thanksgiving dinner so I am not missing out completely.  However without a halloween down under, this year will not be complete.  I have no costume planned and no great idea hidden up my sleeve right now but I fully intend to celebrate what is the best holiday ever, no matter where I am.

I talked with my traveling companion, Adriana, yesterday and we are both more excited than words can describe.  My mind is so dead set on where I am going that I can barely focus on anything else.  Although looking out the window of my train car and heading to Portland is beautiful.  Its early and there is a heavy fog blanketing the Willamette Valley.  Like my future I can only see what lies directly up ahead and no further.  So many people are still asleep, so many are just waking, so many will miss out on the beauty in their own backyard but will dream instead of a foreign paradise.  Today I am lucky enough to experience both, from a unique sunrise over the verdant green of the Oregon Cascades to the unknown treasures that will greet me in a distant land.

Noah and I on my last day in the US

An Exercise in Free Writing

What interests me?  What gets my goat? What floats my boat?

Do I want to devote my life to applied science or to the pure theoretical inquisition of the world?  There is no way that I can simplify a choice like this into an "either or" form.  That just isn't the way life works.   No decision is reduced to A or B in reality.  There are infinite choices and only one reality.  All we can do is to take the first step and to address the next decision that must be made.  Assess where each choice has taken us and use past history to inform our present decision making.

So how do I decide what I want?  Not what I like, that question is simple enough to answer.  I like science, I like biology, I like physics, I like chocolate, I like animals, I like plants, I like being active, I like music, I like longboarding, I like traveling , I like a lot.  I would wager that in general I like a lot more than I dislike... and I like that about myself.

However the real heart of the matter that I am after lies in what I want, not what I like.  Do I want to spend life in a lab? No.  Do I want to spend life in a remote location with no contact? No.  Do I want to spend life teaching at the risk of gaining little or no direct experience? No.  Do I want to experience new things every day, never to gain a familiarity or understanding of what is around me. No.  These questions represent the extremes.  They are both sides of the spectrum, the polar opposites, and each one would make me equally happy and equally unhappy in life.  Leaving part of my soul fulfilled while another feels empty.  However by listing the these opposites from my own individual point of view I think that I will be able to get a bearing on where to find my a personal equator.  A bearing towards the place and to the life that would give me the greatest happiness of mind and most complete self actualization.

So what else then do I see at the extremes of my personality?  My interest of identification and classification leads me to want a career in field naturalism.  My interests in comprehension, education and expert knowledge leads me to want a career in intellectual thought and education.  My interest in creation, invention and construction leads me to want a career in the applied sciences.  Through it all I want to make a difference, no... let me rephrase that.  Through it all I want to be different. I don't want to follow the basic mold.  I want to go about things my way... to discover and uncover my own process uninhibited by the biases of others.  I am happy to receive constructive feedback but do not attempt to tell me that what I am doing is worthless or insignificant just because I go about it in a different way.

As Thomas Edison said, "I succeeded in inventing 1000 ways not to build a lightbulb. Then having exhausted all other possibilities I built one that worked".  The lightbulb had already existed before Edison worked on it.  However, after trying every idea in his head he discovered how to create the most efficient bulbs and longest lasting filaments.  Well what good does it do us if no one ever tries anything different?  If we all fall right in line then we have nothing but the same flaws repeated over and over again.  Without the possibility of genetic mutation or as Darwin called them "abominations",  even evolution would cease to occur.  Often mutations are deleterious, they have negative impacts but every so often they add something new and beneficial to the mix.  It does not have to happen frequently but when a positive mutation does occur it tends to stick around.   At the very least I could discovers new ways to error... and possibly new ways to think.  Writing all of this down is effectively a new way for me to think and in the last five minutes I have discovered much about my own thoughts.

But still I ask what it is that I want.  What life lies between those extremes I mentioned before? What future will build bridges between them all.  It is the Question that remains complicated.  The Answer is simple.  It is the one decision that we decide to live out.  It is the Actions that we take.  Everything else is ephemeral and fleeting. The question of how we want to live our life is what takes years and years to discover.  What is my question?

"What is the peculiar arithmetic of my soul?"

-Andrew "Ender" Wiggin

Project Preperation

We are working hard getting everything ready for the upcoming field season, at least when there is work to be done.  Most of it is logistical and requires lots of time to process. Its all very bureaucratic and a field assistant such as myself cannot really help with that side of things.  Filling out the paperwork doesn't really get my heart racing anyways.  The Scuba class is still moving along at a steady pace.  Lets call it a slow trot.  We should be wrapping it up quite soon and then I am officially a certified research Diver.

My comfortable housing in one corner of the lab at FIU.

I was assigned a literature review project.  Now that probably sounds more like a homework assignment than field work and in truth it is but after being away from an academic setting for almost a year I am actually quite happy to be back reading scientific papers.  My brain has felt a bit atrophied and its nice to get the nerves firing again.  My specific goal is to determine the effects of water temperature on sea turtle dive times.  At the same time I am learning a lot of background knowledge about sea turtles.  For instance Loggerhead Turtles are omnivorous and feed mainly on invertebrates while Green Sea Turtles are herbivorous and feed on sea grasses.  These two turtles will be the focus of our research in Shark Bay.

A much more exciting project that I have also been a part of is designing and assembling makeshift critter cams.  First the body is carved out of some high density syntactic foam. The carving and shaping is my favorite part.  It must be carved so that each piece fits and the entire package still maintains a specific balance between weighting and buoyancy. Then we set in and epoxy down the various elements required to record depth, temperature, time, and video.  A large part of my job will be to catch the turtles so that we can attach homemade critter cams to them and see life from a turtle eye view.  There are a few good videos of exactly that on the Shark Bay Ecosystem Research Project website.  Check it out!  The man who's lab I am working for, Dr. Michael Heithaus, was the host of National Geographic's Crittercam series.  He is quite a remarkable person. He is the type of guy that could be described as the Michael Jordan of underwater research.

I wanna be like Mike.

A crittercam prototype without the camera attachment.  Ill post pictures of the real deal when i get to Australia.

The GoPro camera that we will be using on the turtles.

The Heart of True Science

I am down in Miami now, Biscayne Bay to be more accurate, working on my new scientific SCUBA certification.  Although I am not particularly a huge fan of the Miami area in general, I have been having a fantastic time here so far.  The SCUBA class is only scheduled to meet twice a week so I am finding myself with loads of free time.  With this spare time I am getting to know the the various masters students, phd students, and post-docs in the lab at Florida International University that I am working in.  I have already learned a lot about what it means to be a masters student versus a PHD student and all of them love to chat about what they are doing, where they are heading, and what kind of experiences they have had that led them to the point they are now at.  It gives my own life and potential future decisions a little more perspective that I have not had up until this point.

I hear from those who have only just begun the process, the ones that I most directly relate to, but I also get to see what it is like to have finished your work as a student and to finally be at the point where you are exploring subjects because you want to... that you are genuinely interested in.  As I have recently learned this is not always the case with student work.  Now, that is not to say that these people are unhappy with their projects at all because that is far from the truth.  In fact, I would consider it the mark of a good scientist to be able to find the curiosity and intrigue in any subject matter, as these people seem able to do.

 Take for instance a girl I have recently met who has only just begun working toward her PHD.  She is 23 and moved to florida at the beginning of this semester with an urge to study something fun and interesting to her.  She is now working in a lab that focuses its efforts on seagrass, which is not a subject that many would find particularly enthrawling. However she has a great mentor here and a wonderful support system consisting of the rest of the students and she has discovered ways to make her project her own.  As she explained to me, you are not required to focus solely on the seagrass as your main subject.  There is a lot that we do not know about it and it might just be more important than we thought.  If you picture a mangrove swamp, lets say the Everglades and the coral reef just offshore from it there will still be one crucial element missing, and that is the seagrass which forms a boundary separating the edge of the mangroves from the coral.

With this in mind, and without delving too deeply into all the specifics, her thesis question could relate to how various animals use the seagrass border compared to the coral or mangroves.  Or her question could address the fact that the seagrass may actually help to maintain the mangroves in some way by creating a border zone.  Or what the difference in population between each ecosystem is.  Or how global warming/oil spills/hurricanes effect these fragile balanced ecosystems.  With a little more background than I have in the area you could take the general topic of seagrass and open it up to endless possibilities.  Following whatever tangent fills you with that surge of curiosity.  This might seem obvious to others but I wasn't planning on making any assumptions about the nature of graduate work.  I am certain that at other universities it may not be nearly as cooperative as this.

 All the scientists I have met here stress the open sharing of knowledge and performance of "good science" with relevant topics.  Which is the way all science should be... in an ideal world.  Unfortunately a lot of scientists work under the premise that research is a competition and they hide their results with a passion from one another until it comes time for them to publish and to put their name on it.  This is a sad state of affairs that you hear about time and time again.  We need to learn together as a species and a culture if we are to put any of the knowledge that we gain to use.

I am just a temporary field biologist, here for training before heading to Australia but every single person I have met in these labs genuinely wants to teach me all that they can and to give experience in as broad a field as possible before I leave.  It is not the first and I hope will not be the last time I say this, but I seem to be leading a rather charmed life.  I am being asked to help out in their research, perform tests, assist in lab work and none of this is even what I originally came her for.  Its all a product of wonderful people in an encouraging environment determined to grow and learn together... This is the heart of true science.

A friendly face in the lab. Can you guess what animal?

Who's that guy with the short hair?