Here is a satellite view of Pearl and Hermes Atoll, where we've been hanging out for the past wek and a half. The "atoll" is sort of a confusing concept, and indeed I did not completely grasp the concept myself until I came up here and saw it first-hand. I know my explaination of an atoll to mom left her a little hazy.. So, since I mention it so often in this blog, I'll just try to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. An atoll is this: It is what remains of a high, volcanic island (just like the main Hawaiian islands), after the island has completely subsided into the sea. The barrier reef that forms around that high island is all that is left- a ring of coral. Because coral is alive, and constantly depositing its calcium carbonate skeleton, the coral reef builds upon itself and stays close to the surface of the water as the rocky part of the island sinks/erodes below sea level. This ring of coral is an atoll. The atoll is not in itself an island, but there are usually spots along the ring of coral reef that accumulate sand and become islands. (Otherwise known as motus). In the case of Pearl and Hermes, the atoll is approximately 15 miles across at its widest and has 7 islands scattered around the periphery, most of them low sandspits. In the center is the lagoon, which is a mishmash of deep pools, sand-channels and patch-reefs. We call this the maze, because the patchreef can be too shallow to drive a boat over, and it weaves in and out and all over the place. I'm sure you can see this by the photo...Today brought a small hiatus from the usual debris work. My boat team was assigned to place some substrate-mounted oceanography equipment at several sites on the south side of the atoll. We placed three "STR"s (subsurface temperature recorders) on the bottom at various isobaths (45 and 75 ft.) on the forereef. 
These STRs are nicknamed the "pipebombs of science" because they look and feel like homemade incindiary devices. After navigating to the GPS point where the old STR had been placed, we donned our scuba gear and went down to swap it out with a brand new one. (They stay in place for a year or more, and record temperature vs time data). The method for attaching these devices to the reef is, as you'd expect, very high tech.......: zip-ties. We would find a little archway or hole in the reef that we could get our fingers through, and zip-tie the heck out of it until the thing looked like a little kid had gotten his hands on it. Because I am 
only a rookie NOAA scientific diver, I was not allowed to dive past 60 feet, and thus only got to do one dive at the 45 ft isobath. The dive started off great, with visibility that was mind-blowing. I'm going to put myself out on a limb and say that is was quite possible that there was 200 feet of vis in this particular spot... With about 50 big uluas circling us the whole time, 3 Galapagos sharks, and one friendly whitetip, the wildlife was pretty good too. (Oh yeah, and I saw a masked angelfish there too- quite rare). My dive buddy Kevin Lino and I got to the bottom and immediately started to work- he at cutting the old STR off the reef, and me at screwing stuff up... We had a reel with a line on it that led to a surface float (our boat did not anchor because the swells were pretty big, and thus needed a marker of some kind to circle around while we were submerged). The reel was malfunctioning and would not lock, so I began trying to fix it. While I was doing this, the digital camera that I had around my wrist worked its way loose, and unbeknownst to me, rocked to the surface. We needed the camera to take shots of the STR serial number, depth, and surrounding area. So, when I went to go for the camera, it was gone. I communicated this to Kevin with hand signals, and he signaled back that he would go to the surface and look for it while I mounted the new STR. I busied myself with the zip-ties, but felt like banging my head against the reef. Luckily, our other two team-members on the boat had spotted the camera when it hit the surface and saved my ass from making a $400 mistake... It could've been easily missed too- rough water, big swells, lots of wind, near the surf-zone.. Anyway, I finished mounting the STR, completely oblivious to the shark that Kevin told me later was making close passes at the back of my head. Kev joined me on the bottom and we gathered up our gear. That done, we began our ascent. 
Our required 5 minute safety stop at 15 feet allowed for a good chance to chill out and watch all the fish circling us, mostly big uluas. For those of you that don't have a clue what an ulua is, here is a picture of one for you. They are also known as jacks. Up here, they get up to around 100 pounds and can be as big as I am. They like to come in close and bite shiny things. Susie, one of my boat crew, was bit on the hand two days ago by a curious (stupid) ulua.
These STRs are nicknamed the "pipebombs of science" because they look and feel like homemade incindiary devices. After navigating to the GPS point where the old STR had been placed, we donned our scuba gear and went down to swap it out with a brand new one. (They stay in place for a year or more, and record temperature vs time data). The method for attaching these devices to the reef is, as you'd expect, very high tech.......: zip-ties. We would find a little archway or hole in the reef that we could get our fingers through, and zip-tie the heck out of it until the thing looked like a little kid had gotten his hands on it. Because I am 
only a rookie NOAA scientific diver, I was not allowed to dive past 60 feet, and thus only got to do one dive at the 45 ft isobath. The dive started off great, with visibility that was mind-blowing. I'm going to put myself out on a limb and say that is was quite possible that there was 200 feet of vis in this particular spot... With about 50 big uluas circling us the whole time, 3 Galapagos sharks, and one friendly whitetip, the wildlife was pretty good too. (Oh yeah, and I saw a masked angelfish there too- quite rare). My dive buddy Kevin Lino and I got to the bottom and immediately started to work- he at cutting the old STR off the reef, and me at screwing stuff up... We had a reel with a line on it that led to a surface float (our boat did not anchor because the swells were pretty big, and thus needed a marker of some kind to circle around while we were submerged). The reel was malfunctioning and would not lock, so I began trying to fix it. While I was doing this, the digital camera that I had around my wrist worked its way loose, and unbeknownst to me, rocked to the surface. We needed the camera to take shots of the STR serial number, depth, and surrounding area. So, when I went to go for the camera, it was gone. I communicated this to Kevin with hand signals, and he signaled back that he would go to the surface and look for it while I mounted the new STR. I busied myself with the zip-ties, but felt like banging my head against the reef. Luckily, our other two team-members on the boat had spotted the camera when it hit the surface and saved my ass from making a $400 mistake... It could've been easily missed too- rough water, big swells, lots of wind, near the surf-zone.. Anyway, I finished mounting the STR, completely oblivious to the shark that Kevin told me later was making close passes at the back of my head. Kev joined me on the bottom and we gathered up our gear. That done, we began our ascent. 
Our required 5 minute safety stop at 15 feet allowed for a good chance to chill out and watch all the fish circling us, mostly big uluas. For those of you that don't have a clue what an ulua is, here is a picture of one for you. They are also known as jacks. Up here, they get up to around 100 pounds and can be as big as I am. They like to come in close and bite shiny things. Susie, one of my boat crew, was bit on the hand two days ago by a curious (stupid) ulua.After checking out the wreck, we headed to southeast island to pick up some land debris. As the third island that I've been allowed to set foot upon during this cruise, southeast island is much different from the other two (Green island at Kure, and Laysan Is). It is very low (perhaps only 5-6 feet above sea level, and very small (only 400 meters long perhaps). It is vegetated in two distinct patches with grasses and low-lying coastal plants. 
An even lower sand-spit connects the two vegetated patches, and apparently during storms or excessively high tides, is awash. The backside of the island has a small stagnant lagoon of turbid turqois bordered by beach-rock shelves. Three people from the NOAA protected species division are camped out there for the duration of the monkseal pupping season. One of them is Kevin L's roommate from back on Oahu, so we stayed and chatted it up with her for a while. I perused her collection of glass fishing floats and monk seal skulls while the endemic finches hopped around at my feet.
An even lower sand-spit connects the two vegetated patches, and apparently during storms or excessively high tides, is awash. The backside of the island has a small stagnant lagoon of turbid turqois bordered by beach-rock shelves. Three people from the NOAA protected species division are camped out there for the duration of the monkseal pupping season. One of them is Kevin L's roommate from back on Oahu, so we stayed and chatted it up with her for a while. I perused her collection of glass fishing floats and monk seal skulls while the endemic finches hopped around at my feet. In general, operations have been going really well and we've been bringing in a ton of debris. Our cargo container on the back deck of the ship was long ago filled to the brim, and now we've resorted to just piling it up the the deck anywhere we can find space. Needless to say, things aren't smelling all that good right now. Our four boats have been consistently bringing in 300-600 kilos per boat per day, and it stacks up quick.
Three days ago, our boat team had a most amazing day of towing, apparently the best Kevin L. has ever seen in his 4 years doing debris. We were assigned an area of the backreef on the southwest side of the atoll. It was crisscrossed with deep channels, cliffs, overhangs and other cool features. In places there was up to 90% coral cover- mostly montipora capitata/flabellata (rice corals) in whites, pinks and neon purple, and Pavona duerdeni (pork-chop coral) in brown. The fish were out of this world, and I saw more new species than I'd ever encountered before- Japanese angelfish, cardinalfish, etc. There would be grey reef sharks around every turn, and of course the ubiquitous uluas.... Not to be too cheezy or anything, but the towboarding was like a Disneyland ride- swooping down into deep ravines, pulling hard turns under the overhangs, coming in low to the deck and then shooting up over ledges. Kinda like that scene in Star Wars where Luke is driving the X-wing through all those channels in the surface of the Death Star and then dives into the center of the thing to blow it up..... Yeah...
We didn't really find any net there, but had a heckuva good time. That, of course, was the one day we forgot to put a battery in the camera, so it will remain a fond memory locked up only in my brain, as it probably should be anyway...
No comments:
Post a Comment