Quadrats, Transects and Surveys, oh my!

Yesterday was a pretty cool day. We spent the day on a small island off the north side of Moorea called a motu. We basically snorkeled for the entire day! We started off with a two hour snorkel out to the reef crest, and saw a lot of fish, coral, and even a stingray! My friend Trishelle and I had a cute wrasse (a type of fish) follow us for like 20 minutes! After lunch, a group of us snorkeled around the entire motu, which took about 45 minutes! Then we had like 2 hours to just chill, so we all hung out in the water and just chatted. On our way home, we stopped at a shallow snorkel area with a bunch of stingrays for like 15 minutes! No where near as cool as Stingray City in Grand Cayman, but still really fun since rays are so cute and soft!

Today was the first day we actually did really science-y stuff! My group and I were responsible for conducting benthic (ocean floor) surveys on the reef off of the research station. We used transect lines, which are basically just giant measuring tapes, to lay out a 30 meter line, and then used quadrats, which are just 1m PVC squares, to see what was in the randomly selected areas. We used scuba, and our first dive off of the Gump Reef was 70 minutes! Then we headed over to the next bay over, Opunahu Bay, and did a 94 minute dive to survey the reef! This survey was a bit harder, since the reef was basically a vertical wall, but it was cool to use real science techniques in the field. I also learned how to fill a scuba tank! I have been studying (kind of- as much as one can study in paradise with friends) for the invertebrates test we were supposed to have tomorrow, but now it got moved to Monday, so I probably won't be putting too much effort towards it tonight afterall.

Tomorrow we are working on more class projects, and I think I will be collecting and sorting sediment. Not as exciting as surveying and scuba, but oh well, we've all got to take part in the various class projects. A bunch of us are planning to go to a local "dance club" at the golf course about 20 minutes away tomorrow night, so we shall see how that goes! :)

Moorea Day 2

Well it is the end of our second full day in Tahiti! We landed on the main island of Tahiti in the town of Papeete on Saturday night, and most of us wandered around the town for a few hours and stopped in a bar for a glass of the local beer- Hinano! It was nice and sweltering slash humid when we landed, so it was a bit of a sweaty night. Yesterday we took the ferry over to Moorea and got settled in the Gump Research Station and then headed out into the water for a snorkel and to collect invertebrates. That's basically all we did yesterday, and I crashed pretty early since I hadn't slept well the night before. Today we woke up at 6:45, ate breakfast and went snorkeling at 7am! Then we took a bus tour of the island, stopping at various points for our teaching to talk about stuff. Our last stop was a really cool beach area called the "Death Snorkel" which basically just had a really quick current and a lot of coral and sea urchins to avoid hitting! I did see some cool stuff like an eel, triggerfish, trumpet fish, small giant clams, pipefish and pin cushion sea stars! Just lots of fish and stuff that most people don't really care about. haha. Unfortunately I don't have an underwater digital camera, just a disposable underwater camera, so I won't be able to post any underwater pics until I steal some from other people when we get home and upload pics to facebook. I was going to post a few pics of the island, but the uploading is super slow and I got bored of waiting, so I'll try again tomorrow or in a few days!

DISNEYWORLD!!!!

Oh my god! I got the marine mammal internship at Disneyworld!!!! I really did not expect to get it! I feel like I've been rejected from so much stuff, so I figured I would just not get this job either, so I still can't believe it! I had an interview scheduled for this morning at 7:15 am (eww) and they were asking just basic questions like if I was in school, if I had a car, etc, and then she was like, well I'm asking these questions because we would like to hire you. Ahhhh!!! It's crazy because graduation is on June 13th, then the start date for Disney is June 17th, so I basically have to high tail it to Florida as soon as I get out of school! The only bad thing about this internship is that I will be apart from Yoav for 6 months, but I know that we will be able to work out that separation. Plus he can come visit and we can go to Disneyworld for free! Despite the low pay (hey, at least its a paid internship!), I am so excited for the job because I will be feeding the manatees daily, scuba diving in their tank to clean, giving presentations about manatees to the public, some random stuff with dolphins (like daily records) and other random stuff that the marine mammal department needs me to do! Unfortunately, I do have to wear a hideous uniform, but I'll deal with it!

On another note, I am leaving for Tahiti in 2 days!!! Right now I am trying to repack everything. I packed and condensed all my stuff before coming back to school from spring break, but somehow I seem to have accumulated a ton of stuff!!! So now I need to organize everything so that I can be ready for my flight on Saturday! Our flight leaves at 1 pm, but we are meeting at the airport at 8:45 am! That's going to be a long day- 4 hrs in the airport, then 8.5 hours on a plane! But we will be spending the night in Papeete (the main town) once we get to Tahiti, since the ferrys to Moorea will not be running by the time we get there. So that will be fun to get to explore the town for the night with my class! Its hard to beleive that after 4 years of waiting for this trip (ever since I started UCLA as a marine bio major), its finally here!!!!!!

Just another manic monday

Today we've been have lectures on invertebrates and fish, and we have a group discussion coming up on ocean acidification. Overall, not as boring and horrible as all of last week was. But on the bright side, we leave for Tahiti in 5 DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Killing time before work

I'm bored. I'm sitting in the food court in Ackerman waiting to start work at 5:30 and eating Panda Express again. (Geez, I'm going to be fat by the time I get to Tahiti!) Today my fortune says,"HOLD TIGHT TO YOUR DREAMS." Well as I'm learning, that's pretty dang hard to do considering I'm barely qualified for any cool jobs that I would like to get, despite having (well not quite yet, but soon) a bachelor's degree from UCLA. What's the point of going to college if it's not even going to qualify me for jobs in the marine biology field?!!! Who would have thought it'd be so hard to just get a job at an aquarium. Speaking of jobs, I haven't heard back from Camp CIMI yet :( but I did have a phone interview for Disney last week. :) Unfortunately, we won't get a definite yes or no until May 10th, so I've got a long month of waiting and looking for other opportunities ahead of me.

Today in class I was looking over the kid next to me's shoulder and he was making little south park people on a website. Now, I've never really watched south park or been a big fan, but since I've been spending more time with Yoav and his two roommates lately, I've developed an appreciation for the show. I'll admit, it is funny sometimes. (On a side note, I have also developed a new appreciation for the show It's Always Sunny in Philedelphia thanks to them. soooo funny!) Well, anyways, I was sitting here bored, so I decided to make a little south park person of myself in Tahiti (like I said, I'm very bored. haha)

So if I was a squat little person with a large head, this is what I plan to look like in just 19 days!!!


(Notice the tan and the tropical drink!)

I love when fortune cookies are right

The other day when I was eating Panda Express for dinner, I got a fortune cookie fortune that said,"A THRILLING TIME IS IN YOUR IMMEDIATE FUTURE." Panda Express knowssssss that I'm going to Tahiti!!!

So right now, I am sitting in class and we are brainstorming topics for our independent research projects! My group has already finished and we are just waiting to present, hence the blogging. Every day we have to come up with new ideas, experimental designs and scientific sources, so then once we get to Moorea we will have some ideas to work off of when we decide on our research topic. Today our idea is about the effects of nutrients on the presence of herbivores in algal turfs in coral reefs. Exciting, I know. Haha.

Another cool thing we are going to be doing this quarter is blogging as a group for a science outreach program for high schoolers across the country. The other girls in my group are Theo and Lindsay, and our blog title is "Snorkling, Scuba, and SCIENCE, OH MY!" :) We will be writing entries about our experience, research project and activities at least three days a week once we get to Moorea. So here is the link to that blog if any of you people out in cyberspace want to read a more science themed blog! (There will definitely be pictures and even maybe videos posted to our class blog, and I will try to add some to my personal blog as well, but the internet in Moorea is kind of crappy, so it might be difficult).

MBQ project blog: http://majesticmoorea.blogspot.com/ :)

That's all for now! We've just been doing a lot of reading and studying of coral reef algae, so I will post again when we are doing some more interesting stuff! :)