Bintastic!

I’ve finished my dissertation work so it’s finally time to relax. On Friday morning I had my last dive off Hoga at buoy 4. Sarah and I joined Pippa (the woman who runs the site) and Marianne (the Dr)while she did some mapping toward her dive master qualification. Pippa is renowned for going slowly which I love.

In the afternoon we boarded the Bintang Sedang for our liveabord experience. The first dive off the boat was on Buoy 1 just to get used to the system. We dive off a smaller boat and everything is very, very organised. We then stayed the night at the mooring just off Hoga. We all decided to sleep on deck which was really cool even though the weather was a bit rubbish.

The next morning the boat set off to the day’s dive sites which were on the other side of Kaledupa. We spent the morning dosing and reading which was nice. Once we had arrived at the atoll we were going to dive we kitted up and went in. It was amazing. The reef was in really good condition and looked so pretty. The currents were pretty strong but we swam with them and then the boat picked us up wherever we were at the end. It was nice not to have to turn round at any point. As well as the beautiful reef we also saw lots of eagle rays which was really cool. Some of the others in my group saw a turtle too but I missed that. After the dive we had lunch and then relaxed a bit more while we travelled to the next site on the other side of the atoll.

On the way the boat went through a huge pod of melonhead whales that also contained a pod of spinner and a pod of bottlenose dolphins. There were so many of them so close, all swimming with the boat and jumping out of the water. Christos who runs the Bintang said this was the largest group he had seen.

Once we arrived at the next dive site we kitted up again and went in. (I could get used to the sunbathe, sleep, eat, dive, repeat lifestyle!) This time we didn’t see any big stuff but I still think it was my best dive so far. After this we had to set off back to Hoga. The weather wasn’t fantastic but I sat up on the top deck and watched the islands go by.

The reason we had to be back was because today (Sunday) is Indonesian Independence Day. All the local staff have the day off to go and join in the celebrations on Kaledupa. That means that we get to run the island for the day! Everyone does two 3 hour shifts of chores. I helped out in the Kitchen first thing in the morning chopping pumpkin for the soup for lunch. I then helped with the washing up and boiling water with a bit of salad prep until lunch. The soup was really really nice but I think I’ll stick to having it just on cold days in future. Now I’m off to enjoy my last full day on Hoga (I’m back on the Bintang 6am tomorrow) and do some bits and bobs that I’ve been meaning to do.
Abi
xxx

The End is Near

Another Degas day, another blog entry. This week wasn’t as hectic as last but it was my last week for data collection. As usual the couple of days to spare disappeared but since 4:30pm on Wednesday, there were no more transects to lay or starfish to find and measure. There was a slight delay in data collection because one afternoon we weren’t allowed in the water due to Man ‘o War jellyfish (they aren’t very dangerous, just hurt a bit). The movement study went ok, although a lot of them did go strangely missing which was annoying.

On Tuesday evening I gave a talk about my project in front of all of the staff and volunteers on the island. It was a bit nerve wracking but I got through it and everyone said I did well. I think that my results will be significant too which is really good for my dissertation. It’s a relief to get everything out of the way so I can relax a bit more in this my last week. Mary and Sarah (also from Oxford) have also finished now too and James arrived on Hoga from finishing in the jungle on Friday.

Sarah and I went for another jolly into the deep on Monday. We went to buoy 4 and it was good to see the site in the daylight this time! We also watched Pelayo (a PhD student) banging terracotta tiles into the reef wall. He’ll then see how many new coral colonies grow on them after a certain period of time (three months to a year).

Social night last night was fun. I had nothing to do the next day so stayed up late chatting. We also did some crazy dancing to some really fast Spanish ska music which was very tiring.

Today I walked up the beach to a village called Furakke with Sarah. She was taking some pictures of the Agar (a type of seaweed) farms up there. It was roasting! This afternoon lots of us went across to the ‘mainland’ Kaledupa (actually just a bigger island). There were some sports happening as it is Indonesian independence day on Sunday. We had a Hoga vs Kaledupa volleyball match and a game which is similar but has no hands rules like football. It was good to get off Hoga and see a bit more real Indonesia. We went up to the market to do some shopping too but I think many people were at the big football matches. There were loads of children about and some were dressed in what I think were scout uniform. Everyone was really interested in us and said hello.

Tonight will be fairly relaxed and I think an early night is in order as tomorrow I’m going on the Bintang Sedang. The Bintang (as well as a beer) is Opwall’s live aboard boat which volunteers can stay on for a week. You can see it in the picture. It’s really cool as we can get to dive sites which are further afield and also do some marine mammal spotting. Everyone who has been on it so far has said it was amazing and I’m really looking forward to doing two dives a day and not a lot else! After that, however, it will be time to leave Hoga and start the long journey back to Cumbria, so I’ll see everyone soon!
Abi
xxx

Advancing On

This week has been jam packed. I am well underway with the additional transects and am going to start the movement study tomorrow for three days. I should hopefully be finished with a couple of days to spare at the end of this week.

This week was also busy on the diving front. Mary, Sarah and I decided to do the Advanced Open Water course (one up from the basic diving qualification). We had to do 5 different ‘adventure dives’ with an instructor. The first was navigation where at the end we had to use a compass to swim in a square. Mine was more a quadrilateral as on the third side I reached the reef before I had covered the distance! We then did a deep dive. With this qualification I can go to 30m instead of 18m. We went down to a platform on the bottom at 24m. Among other things Tim the instructor cracked an egg underwater. Because of the pressure at that depth the yolk stayed together in a ball and we could have a bit of a play with it which was really cool. I didn’t get to stay down there very long though because you use more air the deeper you go and I’m really bad at using my air quickly anyway. Next was a Peak Performance Buoyancy dive. This is to help you with maintaining neutral buoyancy whilst diving which is very important. An assult course was set up on the platforms where we had to touch floats with our heads and swim through hoops. It was a lot of fun and I think I got better too. The other two were more straight forward stuff which we were already doing on our normal dives. For the boat dive we just had to dive off a boat so this was just a fun outing. We went to a place called coral gardens which was as amazing as the name suggests. The last dive was “Underwater Naturalist” where we had to draw animals to identify on the surface. We also saw a cuttlefish which I was really excited about.

Because I qualified as an advanced diver on Tuesday, I was allowed to go on the night dive yesterday evening. It was amazing but a bit stressful too. Firstly because it was pitch black. Descending was a bit disorientating, but I shone my torch on the reef and got my bearings and it wasn’t too bad. Half way through the dive disaster struck. Sarah’s (my buddy) torch cut out. It was ok though because the group was close and I had a spare. At the same time as this her tank slipped and she was holding on to it to keep it on her back. When I realised I grabbed it too and we swam over to Mr Ben who fixed it easily. It was a bit dramatic but we stayed fairly calm and everything was ok at the end. We saw loads of cool things on the dive including lobsters and a really pretty ribbon worm swimming. We also fed the corals with the worms caught in our torch light up close. I think we also woke up a few grumpy looking fish too! The bioluminescence was amazing too – like swimming in the stars. All in all the dive was good but was a bit like diving for the first time again because everything was new and strange.

After the dive it was social night so we got to fill ourselves with the best food yet. We got barbeque sausages (this is amazing as the only meat we usually get is fish)! Everything was a bit more chilled than usual and some of us went back to a hut to watch a film. That was because the site is a lot quieter now. Loads of people left the island to go home on Wednesday. It was really sad as some of our ‘table posse’ have gone and it’s hard to believe we only have two weeks left, but we had a good night on Tuesday to send them off. There was a bonfire on the beach and we all sat up chatting and drinking Bintang (beer).

On Saturday it was Mary’s birthday. Although we had to work in the day we had a bit of a party in one of the huts. We had tons of food. At dinner she got a cake and we all sang happy birthday. It was funny to see everyone mob our table to get a piece. We went to the restaurant on Sunday too. It was really nice and they had chicken (although it was a kind of (rather tough) Indonesian chicken rather the fat English ones we are used too.)

The busy week ends today with degas day. I went out to collect data this morning, spent some time on the beach and then went a fair way up the beach with Sarah to do some work for her. It was really nice floating around in the really warm (bath warm) water in my shorts and tankini. It took a while to walk there but it was definitely worth it. But now it’s dinner time so time to stock up on more rice.
Abi
xxx

“Under the sea” (and in the library)

Sorry for the lack of updates. It’s been a busy couple of weeks.

Degas day before last was a bit more chilled than ‘Hoga Olympics’ day. We went out for a quick snorkel to collect some data in the morning and then chilled out for the rest of the day. It was better weather too so we spent a lot of time on the sunbathing beach where we are allowed to wear just bikinis. We even went into the sea with no wetsuit which was really odd and I kept thinking ‘why aren’t I moving?’ because I’m so used to having fins on. Hopefully it’s got me a bit browner too, although of course I wore sun cream. At the moment my hands and face are really brown but the rest of me isn’t because I wear my wetsuit so much. My hands look really daft.

The day before was a particularly good one. Sarah (who burst her eardrum on day 1) and I had another go at diving. It went perfectly, we both got down fine, no problems with our ears. I even took off my mask with no panic at all. I was surprised that I managed to do it without a hitch. It was so much fun to be down there at last after we had done all the skills. Laura got us to do a forward roll too which was fun. We went for a bit of a swim by the reef away from the platform (the teaching area) and even though we were only there for a few minutes we saw so many cool things like a huge lion fish, a school of baby triggerfish and I came face to face with a batfish. It was brilliant to see all these things at the same level rather than from above so I am really spurred on to get more diving done.
Because we are now able to dive, Sarah and I are joining in with some of the Coral Reef ecology dives we missed in the first week. So far I’ve been to buoy 2 to see the reef rather than stay on the platform and today I went to the Outer Pinnacle, a spike of coral that we swam round in an upwards spiral. It was fun but the current was really strong so it was a bit of hard work!

Last week we went out for dinner at the Resturant on the island. This consists of a large room with a table full of yummy food. I ate crab and squid (which was really nice), as well as proper desserts like banana pancakes and chocolate sponge.

Degas day this week consisted of even more sunbathing on Bounty Bay, although we did throw a ball around for a while. Watching films on people’s laptops has also become a feature of our time off. We watched The Little Mermaid recently and now have the songs stuck in my head!

Project wise all is well. I have nearly finished all of my original transects so will hopefully have time to do a few more to make my results even more reliable. I’m also starting the preliminary work for the movement study. I am going to measure how far individuals move over certain periods of time. I had all sorts of elaborate plans for how to tag the starfish but it turns out that they all look unique (hopefully) and so all I need to do is take their photos.

Hope everything is cool back in the UK – we realised that we do not know anything that is going on. We decided that the Queen could have died and we wouldn’t even know!

Abi
xxx

Work in the Sun, Fun in the Rain

This week has gone fairly smoothly. Preliminary work for my initial project has been done and 4 of my 30 transects completed (I think). I’m studying the ecology of Protoreaster nodosus also known as the chocolate chip starfish. Nobody really knows much about them so it’s really exciting to find this stuff out. At the moment I’m looking at five different habitats on the front and recording how many starfish and their size etc.

The research station is definitely becoming home. Our group has commandeered a table (of four) in the upstairs study area and when not in the water, we can be found there most of the time working (or at least pretending to work!) The main lodge also has a computer room, offices and a small library upstairs and a dining room and kitchen downstairs. Everywhere is pretty much open and we go most places barefoot which is really nice.

The food is brilliant. The Indonesian kitchen staff work practically round the clock 7 days a week to keep us fed with lunch and tea. It’s usually rice, veg and fish in varying sauces which actually is yet to get boring. Sometimes there is a treat of sweet potato chips or pasta. I think they tone down the spiciness of the cooking for us though and a lot of things are fried. The best days are Tuesdays as this is when they cook fresh doughnuts for us just as we get in from our last dive. Also when there is a birthday on the island they make an amazing banana marble cake for everyone.

We’re kept pretty busy with work and stuff but there is always time to chill out on a kabana or hammock. Thursday is ‘de-gas’ day where there is no diving. This means it pretty much a day off for everyone. Although this week it rained solidly (but we still ran around on the beach) On a sunny day, I reckon Bounty Bay (the only beach where we are allowed to sunbathe in bikinis) will get pretty packed. Because everything is outdoorsy we’re getting a lot of exercise in. I will be a volleyball pro by the time I get back.

As Thursday is a day off, Wednesday is social night. All the tables are taken outside and we eat extra yummy food and drink (moderate amounts) of beer and stay up late. This week we had some locals come over from the main island to demonstrate their marshal art which was actually very dancy. Of course afterwards some of the male dive instructors had to have a go with varying degrees of success.

Everyone on the island is friendly. Most of the westerners here are English, American or Canadian. We seemed to have formed a group of mostly dissertation students who arrived together. The locals are also really friendly. There are several shops on the island which sell snacks and sarongs and other bits and bobs. Everyone says hello when you walk past. We all have landlords that do our laundry and fill our mandi (a big bucket of water to wash with) and mine helped put up a hammock on my balcony.
My hut is basic but nice. It’s on stilts and has a balcony/veranda outside. There are two beds in the room and I share with a girl called Heidi. However, she only spends 2 nights on Hoga and the rest on Kaladupa because she’s doing an anthropology dissertation.

I think that’s enough info for now and that’s all I can think at the moment so I’ll go back to inputting data into my Excel spreadsheet.


Abi xx