Under the Sea

So I hope that you’ve been keeping up to date with everything that I’m up to by looking at my Fickr photo stream (see the link above). A picture says a thousand words after all. But I thought I was well overdue for a bit of a blog update.


Lots and lots have been going on since I last wrote. One big thing is that Claire, my fellow Science Officer left to go back home about a month ago. This left me to do all of the Science Officer stuff all by myself. It was quite daunting at first especially since Claire was so amazing and I was still learning new stuff from her on her last day. It was a pretty hectic few weeks as I ran the Science Development Program as well as going out on the boat for surveys. But I survived and don’t think I did too badly particularly with help from Rach our Project Scientist. Now we have three Science Officers because Tim and Chris arrived to take over last week. I have just started my last SDP and although it’s great to be showing the boys the ropes it’s also really sad to have to let things go.
I’ve also been busy doing my Dive Master training. PADI Diver Master is the next SCUBA qualification up after the Rescue Diver course which I completed a couple of months ago. It’s a professional qualification which means I can use it to work doing things like guiding divers and helping instructors doing courses. The training programme involves all sorts of things like theory exams, practical tasks (e.g. a rescue scenario & mapping an area), swimming tests and then an internship. I have been helping Instructor Emily (and now also Mark) with things like checkout dives and the dive training vols do. It’s been really good to hone all of my skills. I can even swim along with no mask without any worries!
I have also been doing lots of cool diving too. I arrived with 26 logged dives and hit 100 two weeks ago. It’s tradition to go a bit silly for that and so I went out in just my bikini and got graffitied all over me. Turned out it was mostly permanent marker so it took a while to come off! The water here is now really warm. It’s usually about 29degC which means that even a wimp like me doesn’t need to wear a wet suit. Instead I just wear board shorts and a thin rash vest.
Jollies on Saturdays have been really nice the last couple of weeks. In the morning we often dive the south wall at the edge of site. It’s an amazing place and lonely planet actually named it one of the top dive sites in the Philippines! Week before last I saw a really big turtle. In fact lots have been seen around and they’ve even been nesting on a near by beach. The best spot for me last week was a clown trigger fish which was something I’d been waiting to see for ages. Another really exciting thing in the water is our resident family of black tip reef sharks. These like to hang around in the shallows just outside base. Because they’re really quite small (the biggest is only about 1m long) they get really shallow in about .5m of water and so are perfect to spot when snorkelling. There seems to have been an increase in numbers recently and some people have see 10 at once!
Last month I also went on holiday for a long weekend. I went over to Padre Burgos to a dive resort there. It was nice to live in a bit of luxury for a couple of days – hot running water, flushing toilets and some different food! I did some amazing dives whilst I was there too and saw some really cool, rare stuff. I went on a night dive around the pier which was a new experience. It was really quite spooky but I saw a mandarin fish and a crab jumped on my head! I also dived on their house reef and saw a pygmy seahorse. My favourite thing I saw though was some white ornate ghost pipe fish. Although I had seen a dark one on the house reef the week before.

A couple of weeks ago we also did a Crown of Thorns clean up at Padre Burgos. Crown of Thorns seastars are predators of coral and can get really out of control and decimate a reef. Therefore we always try to keep an eye on them and remove them when numbers start to increase. You have to do it really carefully though as they have poisonous spines and release all of their larvae when stressed!

Last Sunday we went on another Whaleshark watching trip. We had an amazing experience with a female who kept hanging around the boat. She was feeding with her mouth open and we were able to get really close (although not closer than 5m) because she wasn’t really swimming quickly at all but staying in the same place. I was so pleased that my last trip was a great success.
Saturday nights have continued to be lots of fun with plenty of opportunities to dress up. Themes have included circus, the letter ‘D’ and ‘anything but clothes. Photos to follow. We’ve also been up to lots of fun things in the community like planting Mangrove trees, open days and attending the Napantao fiesta :)
I can’t believe I have less then three weeks to go here. Then it’s off on some travels around the rest of the Philippines!

Love
Abi
xxx

Workin' 6 'til 10

So a few people have commented on how it doesn’t seem that I actually do much work. I think mainly because I’ve been writing about exciting things rather than the day to day. So with a new batch of volunteers just arrived or dive trained I thought it was the perfect opportunity to let you know how I am earning my keep. As one third of ‘Team Science’, as we are affectionately known, I help to keep the science which goes on running smoothly.

One of the central aims of the Coral Cay expeditions is to gather data about the coral reefs in the area. This data can be used in a variety of ways to help conservation efforts here in the bay, in the Philippines and also worldwide. Firstly we want to get a picture of what is actually out there. You can’t protect something if you don’t know what that something is. Our data is also be used to find suitable sites to set up MPAs (Marine Protected Areas), compose reports which go to local government and then to monitor what affect they are having on reef health. We also do Reef Check surveys which contribute to a world wide data collection effort.

The most important type of survey which we do, and the ones which go ahead throughout the year (rather than every 6 months as with reef check and MPA surveys), are baseline surveys. These are the most in depth and look at everything found on the reef; corals, algae, invertebrates, fish and the physical environment. Coral Cay aims to make a detailed map of the coast of Southern Leyte using this information. With each transect on which we record data only 250m apart this is a massive task! To make things easier the coast is divided into 1km long stretches and currently we are focusing on just 3 of these which are fairly close to base. Each survey starts at a depth of 24m meters and then progresses into shore. This usually quite a long way so each transect will take several dives to complete.

For the past couple of weeks we have been moving on with surveys while we have had at least one survey team (4 divers). I have spent a lot of time on the boat (the way we travel to survey sites) as Boat Marshall. This job includes being on the boat to check that all the divers are safe, inform Delia of the divers’ status and make sure they enter the water at the right point (using GPS) as well as noting down data such as weather and boat activity on the surface. I am also responsible for deciding exactly where we are going to go in a day and what volunteers are doing what job. I also have to log what we have done and help with the entry of the data into the computer.

But before any volunteer can take part in a survey they have to know how to do one and what it is they’re looking at. This is where SDP (Science Development Programme) comes in. This is a course that lasts about 10 days where the volunteers learn how to identify basically everything on the reef as well as the survey techniques they will be using and therefore become ‘validated’. This is done though lectures, ‘pointy’ dives where vols get to see in the field what they have just learnt about in the classroom and several tests. For each topic there is a computer slideshow test, a pointy test on a dive (where a validated vol points at organisms to identify) and trails which are permanent transects which mimic what happens on a real survey.

Currently Claire (the other SO) is away in Malupasca visiting the Thresher Shark Project so this time I’m all on own to teach and organise SDP (with some help from Project Scientist Rachel). So far it’s been good. Although the group is massive it was great to see them so happy after coming up from their first pointy dive. I’m really excited to teach them all the cool stuff I know and get them out doing surveys.

So I am a busy bee doing all sorts of things in the name of conservation science!

Love

Abi

xxx

Seven Weeks

I have just realised I’ve been on site for nearly 7 weeks. Time has flown by but it’s also made me realise how rubbish I’ve been at updating. I hope everyone has seen the photos that I’ve been putting up on Flickr though – if not heck out the link above.

I thought I’d tell you about some of the things that I’ve been getting up to that aren’t aprt of the day to day business of the site.

A big part of Coral Cay’s work is to do with community education and involvement. There’s no point in doing the science if the people who are directly affected by and have an impact on the health of the reef are not knowledgeable and enthusiastic about conservation issues. This means the Bridget the Education officer and Rachel the Project Scientist spend at lot of the time going out and about. But sometimes the vols can get involved too. The first week I was on site we took everyone on the boat to the nearby town of Santa Paz. Here we did a reef and beach clean as well as a presentation about waste management for the local kids. It was a lot of fun and I even had to dress up in full SCUBA gear to show how it all worked!

We also get involved with school children (and the wider community) by doing wall paintings. We’ve had a couple of sessions at the schools in Napantao where we have adorned the boring walls with a multitude of brightly coloured sea creatures. Again, this is really good fun; especially when the children get involved.

We have also gone to play San Francisco at basketball. Basketball is the Philippines national sport and the basketball court is often the centre of the community. It also means they take their game very seriously. At first we put up a good fight but then we decided that us girls should show them how it’s done. It kind of got a bit silly after that…

On a completely different note, a couple of Saturdays ago we all went to the local Karaoke place. It wasn’t a bar as such but an open wooden shack with the machine inside. These karaoke machines are all over the place and are just like an arcade game – you put in the money and make your choice. But as always we had a brilliant time and some people shone out as real performers!

We have also been on a couple of trips on Sundays. The best was the waterfall trip (post karaoke). We all got on a hired bus and travelled a little distance down the coast. It was just like a school trip complete with singing on the way. It was then about an hour and a half walk (and seven river crossings) to get to our destination. Walking through the forest was really exciting and we saw loads of cool bugs on the way. Sometimes the trail was pretty hairy with some steep slopes and rocks to climb over but the singing continued. Arriving at the waterfall was amazing. It just looked just like the ones in the shampoo adverts. We immediately jumped in to cool down and wash off. It was so nice to but fully immersed in fresh water even if it was a little cold. There were lots of ledges where you could sit and even a ‘Jacuzzi’ where there was a seat right in where the water flowed. We had our picnic sat on the rocks before setting off back down the river to the bus.

Last week was a bit different on site because of Holy Week. All of the staff went home to their families so there was no diving and we had to fend for ourselves. But we used the time well and I completed my Rescue Diver training (because we didn’t have to go deeper tan 5m). They were right when they said it would probably be the most fun course. We spent almost the whole day in the water practicing how to deal with different emergencies; in particular dealing with a panicked diver who will just lash out and probably try to push you down. Bridget (who is also an assistant instructor) did a great job of trying to drown us all. Another important thing we learnt was how to give rescue breaths in the water while towing a person to safety. That was tiring! Then we put everything together in some scenarios. I had to deal with Nick who had run out of air underwater, panicked, got cramp and then finally stopped breathing. Dragging someone who is at least 50% larger than you onto a beach is not easy.

I also went into Liloan with Holly to do resupply (aka the shopping). It was really good to get off site and see a bit of ‘real life’.

On Easter day itself we had been invited to a festival in Santa Paz. Some of us arrive at about 9.30am to find that we had either missed it or it wasn’t due to start until much later. But Rodrigo, the town captain, took us to the local karaoke bar and we sang out hearts out. This time in the morning g beat karaoke queen Claire’s record which I was quite proud of. And we got 100% score for one of the songs. The next day we were invited back in the evening for the singing contest which was really quite funny.

But this week things have been back to normal and I have been involved in the teaching of vols and running of surveys as usual. But in exciting news I have started my training to become a Dive Master. It’ll be hard work but an amazing qualification to have.

Keep those e-mails and comments coming. It’s great to hear from back home :)

Love

Abi

xxx

Where am I?

Things are still busy, busy, busy here and set to get busier with four new arrivals today. But I thought I’d tell you a bit about the place that I’m calling home for this next 5 months.


The CCC base is called Napantao Dive Resort and is unsurprisingly found next to the village of Napantao. We’re in the big bay at the bottom of Leyte (called Sogod bay) and are actually situated on the large island at the bottom of the eastern peninsular.

Our base is pretty much self contained with the village and one tiny shop at the top of a very steep hill. We are by no means in the middle of nowhere like on Hoga but it does feel a bit like that some times; especially because volunteers aren’t allowed off site unless on an organised trip. Although I haven’t been anywhere much yet staff like the Bridget the Education Officer, Rachel the Project Scientist and Holly the Expedition Leader are always off seeing people and doing things in the area and even further afield.


We have one main building which is basically a large dining hall with bedrooms coming off it. I am sharing my room with Bridget who is a high school teacher from Canada. Although the room is pretty basic with only a little bit of furniture we have made it feel quite homely. (Although any pictures, photos, drawings etc that you can send to brighten the place up would be most welcome.) Each room also has an ensuite toilet and shower. The only problem is that they are not plumbed in! However, there is a well where you can go and have a shower or pick up fresh water to take back to your room.


One of the perks of being staff or a long term volunteer is having a front room. These are on the front and I get to wake up to the view of the sea every morning. The base also has a terrace out front with bamboo benches to sit on. The best bit is that the building is only about 10m from the water. The shore is rocky and so there is a wall in front with the water below. When we go diving just outside the base we just go down some steps and there we are!

The actual view from my bedroom window

There is also a Science Room; where I am sat right now, which has two computers, a blackboard and lots of bits of equipment etc. This is the classroom where are the dive and science teaching takes place and I will spending a lot of my time in here. There’s also a kitchen where Tata, the cook, makes his yummy dinners for us. Everyone takes it in turns to do chores (although the staff less so) like cleaning, washing up and making breakfast. Making breakfast is the least favourite chore because it involves getting up at 5:30am so that the meal is ready for 6:00am. But you get the fun of waking everyone up with the lunch bell and your favourite tune blasted out loud. Breakfast is at 6am most days with lunch at 12noon and dinner at 6pm. In between times is science and diving but more about that another time.


In the main room there is also the ‘Whale Shark Bar’ which is a bar with a big whale shark painted on it. There are fishy things painted on all the walls. The cool thing is you get to sign your name on the bar if you see one :)


I hope everyone at home isn’t too cold. Summer is starting here and it’s just getting hotter and hotter. To make you feel better there has been some rain today and a heavy downpour last night. Also, it isn’t sunny everyday with some clouds in the sky.


It’s been lovely too read all of your e-mails and comments. I’m doing my best to reply but be assured that I am reading them!


Love


Abi
xxx

WHALE SHARK!

Hi everyone!
Things have been really busy here and the internet, although existant, is really slow but I promise that I will post soon about CCC life here at Napanto Dive Resort.

However, I had to tell you right away about the coolest day I had yesterday. As the title suggests I went on a Whale Shark spotting trip. Whale Sharks are the biggest fish in world and are massive. Although they mainly live in the open ocean they do come and feed closer to shore every so often and it just so happens that my part of the Philippines is one of the places where they do this! So we all got on the boat yesterday morning and went off to a neighbouring island called Limasawa. Before we had even got to where we were picking up a couple of other people (some scientists working on Thresher Sharks) we saw one! (Well Jessie, one of the boat boys did.) Everyone lept in with their fins, mask and snorkel and swam toward it. I managed to catch up with the Shark's tail for a while but it was just a bit too fast and I couldn't keep up. It was prety amazing all the same.

When we got to the bay they was more excitement and another dive boat was also there. It turned out there was a Shark in the bay. So, once again, we all got in the water. This time the Shark was swimming much slower so it was easy to keep up with it. It was so beautiful with its white spots and looked so graceful in the water even though it was so big. The Shark was only a small one at about 5 meters. We stayed snorkelling with it for what seemed like forever but was probably about half an hour before it swam away into the blue. It was all a bit chaotic because all the fishing boats came out to see too. Hopefully the pictures that some of the group took can be used by the Whale Shark Project to help identify and track these amazing creatures as they travel around the world. He also had a scar on his head that it turned out was from when the municipality boat had hit it with its propeller a few days earlier. But the shark was so tough that the propeller was bent and the wound had healed really quicky (quicker than the local embarresment I guess). Then just as we were leaving another was spotted. This time it was a bit bigger but quickly went deeper.

A Whale Shark (but not the one we saw...)

http://scienceblogs.com/deepseanews/upload/2007/04/Whale-Shark-01_about_utila.jpg

In the afternoon we had a picnic in a little cove with beach and a medow above it with plam trees all around. It just looked like the pictures you get in travel magazines!

I was so tired at the end of the day but it was such an amazing expereince. I hope that I will get to see more (bigger) Whale Sharks while I'm here although I'm not sure about when the season ends. But I am happy to know that my name is now written on the Whale Shark bar on site.

Abi

xxx

P.S. Although they are massive and they are sharks Whale Sharks aren't dangerous - in fact they eat plankton. But not many sharks are dangerous anyway and this is something that CCC is working with the community on - to try and educate people that sharks are not scary!