Palau 2012, Back to the Warm, Blue Waters.

View from outside my front door.

March 4th, 2012

Assembling tripod for ADCP.

After a year since our last trip to Palau, I was picked up to go to the airport at 4:30 AM by my wonderful father in law, Lee.  I always  hate to ask anyone to pick me up at that awful hour, but he was more than willing, so thank you Lee.  I met up with Billy and Shannon from Scripps in Los Angeles and we continued on to Palau without a problem.  Well, until we were 200 feet off the ground from landing in Palau and the pilot turned the engines on full throttle and we took off again.  Apparently there was a big rain storm and we had to circle around for a couple of minutes until it passed.

Assembling gear.

We were picked up by the Coral Reef Research Foundation (CRRF) crew and taken to the lab where we got our rooms across the street.  It was nice to be able to go to sleep.

Gear.

The next day, we went to CRRF to see if all of our boxes of gear had made it across the ocean, which most of them did.   We spent the rest of the day unpacking and starting to get instruments put together and organized for the rest of our stay.  We had a lot to do before the rest of the group showed up to help us start putting everything in the water.

More gear.

We continued unpacking and assembling gear today to be ready to put out on the 5th.  The Scripps crew put together an ADCP (measures water speed and direction), time lapse cameras, and a REMUS (underwater robot), while I put together the CalPoly REMUS that Mark Moline had up in the Arctic during the past 8 months (http://svalbard-fulbright.blogspot.com/).  I also assembled our ADCP, put up the satellite phone for the REMUS to call in, and put up a light sensor that measures the amount of light from the sun at different wavelengths.

My son Luke's dog that he gave me keep me safe during my travels.

The best part of the day was getting to eat Poke (raw fish with seasoning and rice) at the local restaurant next door for dinner.   The weather has been nice since the tradewinds are blowing right now, which means some rainshowers and wind that keep the temperature in the high 70's.  Not to HOT, which Im sure is right around the corner.
Good night