Rangiroa & the “Garden Party”

MFT: Le Plongee de la ava Avatoru!

LFP: Being sticky from humidity. 

Hey, it’s Aleja’s Field Assistant, Lynn.  Aleja has decided that writing the blog is an important part of the fieldwork that I must help with. This was our first full day at Rangiroa.  We started off with a wonderful breakfast of cake (gateau) and toast.  The toast was made from good bread in a frying pan, so it had that yummy cooked butter crunch to it, arguably the best toast I have ever had.

After breakfast we spend a good long time discussing the research itinerary with our hosts, many parts of the atoll are very dangerous to visit unless the winds are perfect.  We got to meet a local man, he came to pick up Philip (the third crew member) for an early morning dive, who studied under Jac Custo! He was very knowledgable about the island and helped us plan and found us a car for tomorrow.

Since we had to wait till the next day for our car, we decided to get aquatinted with the village, in the form of a pearl farm tour.  Aleja had been on a tour with the SEA students, so she already knew everything and proceeded to whisper in my ear what the tour guide would say 5 seconds before hand.  I thought the tour was very interesting, we got to see the “technicians” doing “surgery” (planting little mother of pearl marbles into the oysters). Then we spend a long time picking out the perfect pearls at their gift-shop.  Afterwards we went to the airport to find the only ATM on the motu, then to the magasin to get snacks for the week.

We had a very good lunch on the boat, the Garden Party,  cooked by the wonderful John-Marie, I had potion crue and Aleja had curry chicken.  After lunch we proceeded to lounge around on the boat for a while until we got picked up to go scuba dive, or “Le Plongee”!  Now, I’m not scuba certified, though I did dive once in the great barrier reef, but Aleja is so she got to do a “drift dive”.  We motored out through the pass and then dropped everyone off on the ocean side.  I got to wait in the dingy and look for dolphins.  I spent about 10min not doing anything, then the guide told me to jump in and snorkel.  Then he threw me a rope and towed me around.  It was pretty neat, but at the end he spotted a dolphin in the channel, so I jumped back in the dingy and we motored over and followed her for a while.  Then I jumped back in and got a great picture before she swam away.  Then it was time to go and pick up the divers who had drifted threw the pass.  Somehow the guide had picked up a tuna fish while I was snorkeling, it was a pretty yellow fin.  When we picked up the divers he told them I had caught it with my bare hands (in French though so I wasn’t sure what he was saying).  Then it was my turn to go diving.  The dive master took me to a little island, and we got to swim around the reef.  He had to hold my hand the whole time since I’m not certified, but it was great.  He was really good at spotting things.  I saw a huge eel, whose head was at least foot wide.  There were also two eels (half as big) coming out of the same hole, which looked silly.  There were so many beautiful and colorful fish everywhere.  We saw a little white and brown spotted goby in the sand, perched in front of his hole.  When we got too close he darted back in a flurry of sand.  There were also clams of some sort that seemed to be encased in coral, and the only sign of them was the neon purple line in the rock that was their mouth.  Then we saw a really ugly sponge that was basically a pile of flaccid brown spikes.  I was kind of disappointed that the corals weren’t brightly colored like they are on the discovery channel, the were mostly brown and grey.  It was really neat none the less, and I’m really glad that I got to do it.

Once we were back on the boat, it was more relaxing and then a fish and rice dinner (for Aleja it was rice salad) and more cake.  Then I pretty much fell asleep at the dinner table.  All in all a great day