June 4: It's like Friday, but not

Rob's gear saran wrapped to the boat

Original plan was the bow...

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 2^nd 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.

The salon: white balanced for 80 ft

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."