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

March 25th, 2011: Very Tired and Heading Home

Shannon and Billy from Scripps carrying REMUS.

Billy and Shannon deploying REMUS

When I wrote last time saying that things had been crazy, apparently I didn’t know how the next couple of days were going to go.  On the 23^rd, the Scripps group got permission to run their REMUS in Jelly Fish Lake to look at jelly fish biomass estimates.   Of course this meant that we needed to get the vehicle into the lake, which requires hiking uphill 150 feet and then downhill over treacherous limestone rocks with all of the gear that we needed.  We had a lot of help from the rangers working at the lake and Emilio from CRRF, which made it a lot easier, but it was still rough getting everything in.  We set everything up with lots of tourists looking over our shoulders and then had the vehicle circle around the lake for a couple of hours.  While the vehicle was underwater we got to relax and enjoy our surroundings.  After we were all finished we had to hike all of gear out and head back to the lab to put everything away. 

When we got back we found out that one of the instruments wasn’t working, which meant we needed to do the same thing again the next day.  None of us were excited, but we all still realized how cool it was to be doing this work so we sucked it up and hiked everything in and out again the next day with beautiful results.  We were going to do another run in the West Channel, but the currents were too strong so we ended up diving to retrieve our last instruments and then headed back to the lab.

Loading gear to go to airport.

After wearing ourselves out the over last two days, we now needed to pack up 2000 pounds of gear and take it to the airport to ship back home.  With only minutes to spare we finished up the paperwork and packing and went to drop everything off.  We returned to the lab to pack up all of our personal stuff, transfer data and take care of last minute things. 

We had some great experiences and worked really hard these last couple of days and now it is time to get on a plane and head for home so we can see our families and work up all the data that we gathered here in Palau.     

March 22, 2011: The Final Days

Deploying current monitoring instrument.

The last two days have been a whirlwind of activity.  Yesterday started off with the Scripps group doing a REMUS run along the western channel to try and image the fish spawning event that usually takes place around the full moon.  Fortunately for everyone, thousands of fish had gathered and the cameras and REMUS were able to capture part of the event.

Hawaii spent the morning doing one last REMUS mission around their instruments and then they pulled everything out of the water.  The rest of the afternoon was spent packing, working with data and getting ready for a REMUS run tomorrow morning.

Mark snorkeling.

Mark and Eric left last night so we are down to just 6 people and the last 2 people from Hawaii are leaving tonight.  This meant that the Hawaii group spent all day packing.  It always amazes me how much stuff goes into a research project. 

Humphead Wrasse.

Ian during beach landing.

Billy and I took the Scripps vehicles out to a protected feeding area for Dugongs, which are close relatives of the Manatee.  Nobody is allowed into this area, but luckily we got permission and were able to survey it.  What we are hoping to do is characterize the feeding habitat and bottom types in a couple of hours, which can take months by hand.  Since we were there we did a little diving and snorkeling.  It was pretty special to be in an area where people are not allowed to go all the time.    

The Scripps group went back out to change a battery on one of their current meters and I stayed back to work on data.  It is getting close to the end.

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

March 18th, 2011

Yesterday was an amazing day.  We got to travel down to the Southern tip of Palau and watch the Scripps group deploy an ADCP to measure water currents.  This was right off of the island of Peleliu, which was a huge battle site during World War II.    The currents were very strong and the Scripps group did a great job.  We moved on and deployed a wave sensor on the west side of the island and then looked for a good place to run a REMUS mission with two vehicles.  The place that was most interesting happened to be one of the beaches that was used for Survivor Palau.  While the vehicles were out running we got to snorkel around and look at the sea life and coral heads.

Today we headed to the West side of Palau and worked in the estuary to look at runoff from the island and how it disperses in the local channels.  The vehicles had a hard time running since the currents were pretty strong, but we got everything back on board.  We moved over to the main channel and deployed some transponders for the Scripps REMUS and then put out some time lapse cameras to capture a fish spawning event that occurs around the full moon.  We had couple of beautiful dives and got to see a shark and lots of beautiful fish.  We even found Nemo’s anemone.