March 20th, 2011: Jellyfish and Starting to Remove equipment

Lots of Jellies in the lake.

Ian swimming with jelly fish.

Yesterday the Scripps and CalPoly vehicles surveyed an area on the west side of the island that was surveyed last year to look at bottom types and how they had changed, if at all, from last year.  The weather was not good and we got a lot of rain during the missions so we needed to head back home, but the Scripps group wanted to check the time lapse camera’s, so we got to go on a dive with them.  Fortunately for me, I got to see the beautiful anemone that we found the day before.   We headed back to the lab to look at data and prepare for the next day, which was going to be rather early.  The Hawaii group ran another mission around their instrument cluster on the west side of the reef.  They ran into the bottom and bent one of the REMUS’s fins so we spent the rest of the afternoon working with them to get that fixed.

Today was an interesting day.  We were planning on helping the Hawaii group remove an instrument cluster on the east side of the island so they can pack up to go home.  The wind was really blowing by the time we got out there at 9:00 in the morning so the ocean was really rough.  The Scripps group was also going to look at one of their instruments, but had to turn back because the ocean was too rough for the small boat they were on. 

Mark swimming in tree roots around the lake.

We set our anchor and put divers in the water to collect the instruments, but since the water was so rough it was hard to do everything in the order we had planned.  Two of us ended up getting sick and we lost an anchor, but we did get all the instruments out of the water before we headed back to the lab. 

Dr. Eric Terrill from Scripps swimming with Giant Clams.

The best part of the day was getting to go up to jelly fish lake in the afternoon to scout out a remus mission that Scripps was planning on doing to look at jellyfish biomass.  This is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen.  It is a lake that is full of jelly fish that were land locked when sea levels were so high thousands of years ago.  The water is mostly salt water, but does not have a direct connection to the ocean.  Since the jellyfish have no natural predators they have lost most of the ability to sting.  They still can sting you, but it is very weak and you will probably not feel it.  Once you make it out into the middle of the lake there are thousands of jellyfish all around you.  As you swim through them you cannot help but bump into a couple, which feels like you are running into blobs of jello.   After this it was back to the lab to prepare for tomorrow  and look at data from the past days.

 All pictures provided by William F. Middleton of Scripps.

Good Night,

Ian