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| Rob's gear saran wrapped to the boat |
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| Original plan was the bow... |
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June 4, 2013: Day 5 of work- I woke up pretty slow
& sore today. Several days of diving & boating take it out of you. Our
mission for the day was Mayer’s Peak & The Maze. Weather conditions were
starting to deteriorate & work was no fun. We hadn’t seen sun in about 3
days, so all of our gear was soaking wet. In addition, the deck of the boat is covered
in outdoor carpeting & that hadn’t had a chance to dry out in several days,
either. Things were wet & tiring. Some of the divers were trying to keep
their spirits up with overnight pranks, and that was working pretty well. We
were still laughing.
Arriving at Mayer’s Peak, I attempted to help set up the
transects. However, it seemed like nothing was particularly going my way. I
looked for at least 10 minutes for the transect I was going to set up &
never found the stake. Eventually, Vanessa came along rolled out a measuring
tape to help find it. Even with that, it still took both of us a few minutes to
located the stake in the forest of soft corals. Once that transect was set, I
moved over to the one I had planned to survey. I started on the opposite end
from everyone else in order to stay out of the way. I made it less than halfway
along the transect before having to return to the boat for more air. I returned
to the site & never did finish before my 2nd tank ran out. After
this experience, I had a conversation with the boss because I was pretty
frustrated. I felt like I’d been working hard for several days, but never
really figuring out if I was making any progress on identifying corals. It was
always difficult to compare the datasheets I’d filled out to those that the
real data collectors were completing.
We hatched a plan to directly compare my data to that of the
real data collector for that site. We moved to the final site of the day, The
Maze. I was already tired, but we had a plan that I hoped would help me to see
which corals I knew & which I didn’t. However, the weather continued to be
nasty & the current was kicking. I jumped off the boat & thought I knew
where the marker buoy was. However, it turned out that I got swept downcurrent.
By the time I realized that I wasn’t going to find the reef & surfaced, I
was 100 yards away from the boat & continuing to float away. I sank under
the surface slightly & kicked as hard as I could to get back to the boat. By
the time I returned, I was winded, scared & embarrassed. I was supposed to
show that I could do this. I had to have a buoy thrown to me & get dragged
in. I felt like a wet rat. Of course, most of the divers were still on the boat
so I was doubly embarrassed. The captain, who’s been driving this boat for over
20 years, wisely forbade me from getting back in the water today.
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| The salon: white balanced for 80 ft |
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| The salon: normal light... |
Downloading my camera, I noticed that I had left the white balance set for 80 ft of depth. Anyone who has studied oceanography "knows" that red disappears first and has seen an image which looks like this. However, I find it to be a totally different scenario to actually see it happening. I set the white balance on the camera underwater by pointing the camera at a white datasheet & telling it, essentially "this is white." The camera then automatically compensates the colors so that what I told it was white, actually seems white. It adds enough additional color to the image to make the colors look "normal." However, when you bring the camera back to the surface, if you don't change it, it is still set to compensate. Noticing this, I took a few pictures of the salon on the boat. This is how much red & purple had to be added for the images from yesterday to come out looking "normal."
June 7, 2013: After the trip-Looking back through my
pictures of corals, it’s clear that I learned quite a bit about identifying
different species. I had never appreciated the diversity of corals before I had
to really study them underwater. I can now identify at least 30 species of
reef-building corals that live in the Florida Keys & Caribbean. It was
fascinating & I am excited to continue to learn about corals in the keys
over the next several weeks, where I will be helping complete the monitoring
efforts in the upper & lower Florida Keys this summer. In four days of
diving, I logged over 12 hours of bottom time. I also observed lots of
interesting fish & watched a lot of interesting fish behavior. Whenever I
think there’s nothing new to discover in this world, I go diving & I always
see something new or learn something new. 
Often, I observe something that no
one else has bothered to study before, and that makes all of the hard work worth it!
