Transects, transects, transects (SCIENCE!)

Friday was probably the only day we actually did some legit science the whole week! We got up bright and early for a reef transect at Tia’ia, which is near the (evil) golf course. Our students were bright eyed and busytailed, and I think a lot of them enjoyed seeing the sunrise on the ocean!

We got to work right away, surveying the flora and fauna along the reef and the shallow lagoon.

It was really fun in the middle where the current was so strong that us short statured types couldn’t really hold on. Jere (pictured) and Pat sure had fun snorkeling around and helping identify corals and algae and snails!

In the afternoon we did a stream transect, which was considerably less, uh, aesthetically appealing. Many of our students were less than thrilled about the murky water, and even asked ‘is this a practical joke?!’. Indeed, no, it was not a practical joke, but an exercise in the realities of fieldwork. Did you think this was all going to be pretty snorkeling? It might also involve some mud snorkeling! Katie sure seems down for some mud snorkel!

As we drove further up to the more clear and open waters, enthusiasm grew, and we were quit thrilled to find a few eels amongst the creepy crawlers we collected. There were definitely some attempts to catch the real big ones, but they managed to elude the students.

All-in-all, a great day in the field, doing some real SCIENCE!

Motus and snorkeling- yay water!

 

Our Thursday motu day has got to be by far my favorite on Mo'orea so far. We woke up early and took three boats out to the two motus on the northeast corner of Mo'orea. 

The boat trip out there was my first real ocean voyage since the ferry, and what a great way to see these islands. I would love to come back and sail around here; the water is so clear and everything looks so beautiful from the ocean. I got a little bit sea sick when we had to turn around and collect a buoy that had fallen offboard, but I’m going to work on my seasickness. I might be taking a boat license test to try to get licensed on the boats and be able to take students out to the backreef. More on that I am sure in coming weeks.

Here are three of my students, Brandy, Qi and Michelle enjoying the sun on our boat!

Before landing at the motus, we stopped a ways off of them at a common ray feeding station. Tourists come there often to snorkel with rays and see them up close.

I don’t even know if we actually fed them, but they were definitely expecting food. Probably at least a dozen or more big rays were swimming all about and then some black-tip sharks even came in for a look! (Don’t worry mom, these are man-eaters by any means).

The rays and sharks sure made for some great picture opportunities, and I’m glad my underwater camera was up to the task!

After the amazing ray-snorkel we landed on the motus and walked around the perimeter, contemplating the geology and biology of these transient mini-islands. It was some great snorkeling, and I am definitely looking forward to going back sometime soon. To top of the whole day we got saluted by a humpback momma and saw the spray from both her and her baby! I didn’t get any pictures, but it was super cool to see her tail slapping the water over and over. Maybe one day soon I will get to snorkel with them; I have heard this is something that can happen if the stars line up right.  

Ah, another beautiful day on Mo’orea! I loved the wind blowing in our hair as we drove back to the station; Camille in her trendy glasses agrees!

Three coconuts hike- yay land!

So, Tuesday we had a hike up three coconuts.  Here I am at Belvedere- I told you we'd be back again! Look at me all in my 'field clothes'! I learned something disconcerting though; I forgot to bring the bottoms of my zip-off field pants! I guess if I do get around to any fieldwork it will be in field capris!

Jean-Yves Meyer is a french botanist (here in yellow) who gave us a great tour of the forest as we hiked. He has done a lot of work on Miconia, a very invasive plant that they have been managing with a successful biocontrol initiative (unlike the cannibal snails!). Seems like nearly half the forest is invasive plants, so I'm excited to soon hike up the taller peaks where the native vegetation holds out.

All of students were attentive listeners as Jean-Yves stopped at various spots. And what great views on our hike! I'm excited to go back again.

Professor Kirch was the first to pick up a 'science stick', mostly for his bad knee. The students love the term 'science stick' for this essential piece of improvised research equipment, which we use for poking at things. 

A few of the students have those 'cool' barefoot shoes, and I was quite impressed how well they were hiking in them. Alas, I have a feeling their shoes will disintegrate before the end of the trip. So, here is a before picture, which I'm sure the barefoot shoe company would love as a promotional. In a few more weeks, I can post a great 'after picture' when my prediction comes true. 

The views at the top of the 3 coconuts hike are amazing, so of course we had to take some class pictures. I love our students; such enthusiasm! 

It was a great day of hiking, picnicking with great views, and learning more about Polynesian and invasive plants. One of my favorite pictures of the trip so far is of one student, Camille, who brought an inflatable pool toy with her and seemed to really enjoy the lagoon outside our bungalows after our long day of hiking! 

Island tour!

The students all got picked up safe and sound, and we haven't lost anyone yet thank god! Monday we had a tour of the island, and it's surprising small (only about 60 km around) this island of Mo'orea! There is a lot to describe, so this post has a lot of pictures!

 First we drove up the Pao Pao valley in our big tour bus, and saw the wide range of agriculture that's going on here. Lots of pineapple! It's so interesting to think about what this place would have looked like when the Polynesians first settled, and how it would have looked about 300 years ago at the height of their population. There were more people living then on Mo'orea than there are now!

Pat Kirch and Jere Lipps, the two professors who are here right now gave us an extensive and great overview of the archaeology (Krich) and geology (Lipps). Lots of old lava flows and debris fields on this once volcanic island.

Here is a great picture of my co-GSIs Jenny and Bier in the Pao Pao valley. They are so hard working and great pals to live and work with! It should be a great 8 weeks.

After driving through the valley, we ended up at Belvedere, one of the look-out spots where you can see both the Cook and Oponohu bays. Many of our students will probably have projects up here, so I'll have ample opportunity to enjoy the nice lookout. And what a great spot for our first class picture!

All of us GSIs can't resist doing fieldwork, even when we've been instructed by our professors to NOT do more projects (me). So, of course, Bier started looking at his bryophytes as soon as he could:

As we came down the Oponohu bay, we stopped near the estuary at the bottom, and lo-and-behold, we happened to find some of the endangered Partula snails. These snails radiated locally in French Polynesia, and once consisted of almost 80 species. Sadly, an introduced african snail started out-competing them, so to try to control it, then introduced a cannibal snail. Unfortunately, this is an example of classic biocontrol gone wrong, and the cannibal found the Partula more delicious than the africans, and decimated their populations. Now there are only a handful of species left, in a few key holdouts. I'm hoping a student does some project work on this interesting system.

Round the other side of the island, we stopped for lunch at the famous octagonal church, one of the first Christian institutions on the islands. There was a huge religious sweep, and now most Polynesians call themselves Christian,  and many of the old traditions have been lost. We have to reconstruct much of that history from oral records. One of the Polynesian practices was the building and elaboration of marae, a temple of sorts. I'm not going to do any of the history justice (this is Pat Kirch territory), but marae (picture on the right) were temple/shrine structures where the Polynesians offered sacrifices and performed their sacred ceremonies. Within the marae were the sacred upright stones, beside which our tallest student, Manu is standing (left). I understood something about the chief having to be taller than the upright stone, so Manu isn't quite chiefly. Kirch explained a woman would have been killed for even touching the upright stone- sorry Manu! The marae we saw at the southern part of the island is quite impressive, and is one of the 'royal' marae found on the coast. One of the old walls spans more than 100 m. Coral was cut and placed at the base of these structures, involving an impressive amount of work, especially considering they had only rough stone tools!

Of course we snorkeled and explored the waters during our island tour. Here is a super cute and well-camouflaged crab.

 We ended the day at the public beach at Temae, and the snorkeling there was really spectacular. I'm excited to keep exploring this beautiful island in coming weeks!

Last of the preperations before students!

Yesterday was pretty fun. We had already finished most of the prepping, which was to set up the lab. So, we did a few more last minute things; got some phones, and ice cream, and some food for the students who arrive in a few hours so they have some lunch. We had our first baguettes of the island (yum yum!). In the afternoon we snorkeled, and it was super beautiful. We saw two octopusses! Last night we went to the crepes place, which was delicious (I got a ham/pineapple one), and then came back and drank tahiti drink while night lighting for octopi off the dock. There were all these needle fish that came to the light, and last night they got fiesty and started attacking our light and jumping out of the water. One of them jumped right into my lap! 

We had this huge meeting, and this is basically our schedule for the next week:

-Sun (today): students arrive, group dinner at 6
-Mon (all day): island tour, including stops at estuaries, belvedere lookout, temae public beach
-Tues: hiking three coconuts trail
-Weds: hiking three pines trail, and then lunch and tour of the agriculture school
-Thursday: motu trip and swimming with rays!
-Friday: reef transect (which leaves at 5:30 am!), and some beach time
-Sat: afternoon of stats workshop to analyze our transect data, followed by lunch with Professor Pat Kirch at his bungalow

and that's just the first week! It's going to be so busy! So far it's worked out nicely though to work in the morning and to snorkel in the afternoon.

So, today I'm planning to just get a bit of work done before the students arrive, and to chill a bit in the afternoon. At 3 we go get the big group of them. And then it all starts rolling from there!!!

First arrival in Moorea!

Hello friends!

Well, I am here safe and sound in Moorea. I cannot believe I'm actually here, and they are actually paying me to be here and do this!!!!

Getting here was enough of an adventure. I spent the day before leaving finishing up Berkeley business (ESO meeting, Berkeley rep play, PCR), and the day OF leaving finishing up even more Berkeley business (breakfast with friends, and then PCR, PCR, PCR). I didn't get home from all of that until 2 pm. To be leaving at 4:30 pm! It was really stupid. I ran around like a crazy person trying to finish my packing and get my room in order for my subletter.


We got to the airport for the first of several misadventures. My co-GSI Jenny's flight had been cancelled for some stupid reason, but after some tears and money spent, we got everything sorted out. The flight down from OAK to LAX was pretty short. When we arrived at LAX, the second mishap happened, which was that one of Bier's (other co-GSI) bags had gotten left behind. The demon of field-work-bad-luck is  striking early it seems! Nothing ever goes smoothly, that's the only real guarantee. Anyways, we got that sorted and were on our way. The flight from LAX was pleasant enough; got dinner and breakfast, free wine. I love french airlines!


It was great having local musicians and dancers to greet us at the airport. They gave us little Tiare flowers, which I actually saw someone eat, not knowing what to do with it. We got a taxi to the ferry and took that over. The view from the ferry at 7 am was awesome! Here's a picture of the three of us GSIs on the ferry, taken by Jere Lipps, one of the course faculty.

Such nice light on the water. It is so clear and blue!

We got to the ferry station, hoping to have a ride, but no one showed up. This was the third in what I expect was the trio of mishaps, so at least we got that trio of bad luck issues out of the way early!

By our 11:30 arrival at the station, we were dog tired, so we napped until 2:30, and then went to do some errands. Exchanged money (the money is so fat and big!), bought a bike (yay! I am so excited for this), got groceries and everything set up, and got our food for the next week or so. I'm pumped for all the exciting pineapples and bananas which seem to be pretty abundant. We're going to share cooking of dinners, and eat our own breakfast and lunches. We the GSIs  that is. The students all eat to themselves.

At 5:00 we had drinks with the station manager, Neil, who is this british guy who has lived/worked here for 11 years. His place was really nice. We had these awesome pineapple rum drinks, and snacked on chips and nuts, and by 7:30 we were so knackered, we just went home and slept. Now it's the morning, and we've got our rooms and offices set up and we're about to go set up the lab for the students. The adventure begins!