The Squall is Coming Day 16

Today our OSU group had a short meeting before breakfast.  We toured around the water tanks area to begin to plan out what we would do for our lab experiment on lionfish prey behavior.  At this point, it appears that we will be using this home security camera system that one of the researchers at CEI has used in the past to observe lionfish.  We discussed possibilities for camera arrays and then went off to breakfast. 

Today was Alex’s first dive day.  She came down to the Bahamas with a minor ear infection and had to finish off her antibiotics before she could dive (which happened yesterday).  She joined Tye and I to do some site recon for Alex’s habitat project.  It was a productive morning in which we visited a handful of prospective sites.  In the early part of the afternoon, we dove a couple of Tye’s experimental reefs to see if it would be suitable for Alex’s study.  When we came up from the second of Tye’s experimental reefs, the sky looked dark and ominous.  We all made the observation getting out of the water that the weather sure had changed for the worse.  It was clear that we needed to head in as we started to see lightning offshore from where we were.  We started to head very close to the shore on the way back but as we did the weather got worse and worse.  Wind swell was at times 5-6 feet and the wind howled along with the crashing thunderous sounds off in the distance.  Tye and Alex were really concerned as this was one of the worst storms they had ever been stuck in.  We nearly decided to anchor the boat and swim to shore to wait it out but we made a decision to press on thinking the storm would thin out as we headed toward CEI.  It turns out that the opposite was true.  The going was slow and we moved along at a deliberate pace to try to get away from the storm while simultaneously trying not to flip the boat (the swell was that big).  It turns out that the system dissipated eventually and we were able to make it back to CEI safely.  It was certainly not an adventure for the faint of heart.  We sat down to have lunch at the boathouse while we waited for the storm to pass.  The storm moved very slowly so we had to wait over an hour before we were able to think about going back out to the sights Alex wanted to visit today. 

Once we got back out, we dove a number of sites that were no deeper than 20 ft or so.  They were beautiful reefs for the most part and I was quite impressed by the amount of live coral there was on some of them.  The best reef however is what I want to call “nurse shark heaven”.  It was a large reef that had two massive formations.  One of these formations had an enormous cave underneath it that housed what we first thought was just one large nurse shark.  This particular shark swam out of one of the cave openings as we approached the reef (pictured with Alex).  As I followed Alex to the hole, I saw her peer into the opening to see if there were any lionfish hiding underneath.  Right as she did this I

heard a high pitched scream and out came an even larger nurse shark right next to her.  It quickly swam off past Alex but I could tell she was startled by it as it just appeared out from the cave.  As I swam around the reef to look for lionfish, I spotted another opening to this cave and was able to see 3-4 nurse sharks piled up on top of each other.  Apparently right now it is mating season for the nurse sharks so it is possible that this cave was a safe place for them to copulate.  I took some pictures as I peered through the hole (pictured here) and just the same as with what happened to Alex, 4 nurse sharks in a delayed succession came darting out of the hole underneath me.  It was startling to see them come out of this hole because they seemed to barely fit through due to their large size.  After all this happened, I kept thinking to myself that I should have had my GoPro to film that. 

We finished off our field day with a couple more dives to count lionfish for Alex.  They were also cool sites that had interesting structural features (one was shaped like a banana).  Throughout the day, we measured and counted lionfish to assess whether there were enough present of Alex’s study.  After we finished for the day, we came back to clean up and went to dinner.  Since it was the last night the Island School students were here at CEI, they prepared a Thanksgiving like dinner with mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and turkey which was delicious.  Afterward we came back to do our logs for the day at Hallig.  We got through those pretty quickly and then had some dark and stormy rum drinks to cap the day off.  I stuck around inside the Hallig lobby to watch the Kings game with Lillian.  Unfortunately the series did not end tonight but on the bright side, the Kings have a chance to win at home in Los Angeles.  After a few drinks and a long day I am super tired so I am going to head off to bed.  Until later.