Day 3- 1/7/2023

1/7/2023 - Saturday 

We are hoping that we will be able to get to the nesting beaches this evening and do our first night of surveys.  The surf is still up a bit so we will have to go around and see how it is.  We will pack and ready ourselves for the trip and hope for the best.

We did see some sun for a little while this morning but the sky has since covered over and we are expecting a wet night on the beach should we be able to get there.

In the meantime, the team will do some more snorkeling and u/w photography and, perhaps, some paddle boarding.

Ready for the morning snorkel.

It is 1800 h on Saturday and we are still here at Tranquility.  After deliberating with the villagers and our colleague Francis Hickey, we decided that the wind and surf were still too high to go out to the nesting beaches.  In fact the next two days appear to be much the same and we are hoping to be able to get out to the beaches on Tuesday when the wind shifts and decreases from NW at 15-18 knots to SW at 10 kts.  We might be able to make it to the beaches under those conditions.  It is really disappointing to not be able to get on with our primary work but there isn't really anything we can do about the weather.

We still have hopes of getting some tags out but, of course, the chance of finding and tagging nesting turtles diminishes as the days pass.  We will take the opportunity to make a scuba dive tomorrow (the rough weather has limited out options in this endeavor also).



From this windy.com site you can see that the unusual NW winds impact directly on the nesting beaches.  This NW wind has been blowing for a good week now and it has built up some large swells that make landing on the beaches difficult and dangerous.


Ms Jim taking a photo amoung a forest of soft coral.
A massive colony of fire coral.
A beautiful orange sponge.
Closeup of a soft coral.
Corrugated Pipe Fish (Bhanotia fasciolata)

This wind chart for late Tuesday shows the wind shifting to the SW and reducing to around 8 kts.  But, this is a forecast and nothing is certain.  In addition, the left over of the original NW wind swells will still be impacting the north side of Moso Island.

Enough lamenting about the weather.  It is still a beautiful place to be "stranded" and everyone is enjoying the wonderful biodiversity in the marine environment just off out Fares.  One student said, I am going to be really disappointed when I go back to diving in Hawaii!

Below are some of the photos that we took today while snorkeling.  This area has an amazing array and abundance of soft corals.


















 


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