Virtual Birthday Card

Creative birthday cards are Jessee's favorite. But coming up with a new idea every year can hard. Believe it or not, this isn't the first website-oriented card I've given (maybe I should think a while longer before making that known to the world).

Happy 29th! I made you this cake*:

* a (slightly) more edible version will be ready for you tonight.

Back on South Caicos

I'm back on South Caicos after a whirlwind of a trip to Boston! I successfully completed my 80-hour WFR (Wilderness First Responder) course, which was intense but extremely useful and really interesting. It was also a great refresher, as I hadn't revisited much of the material we covered since my last WFR course three years ago. There were 10 of us enrolled in the course, including the SAM at SFS's Costa Rica center (pictured below, at left), and another SFS staffer who will become the SAM at SFS's debut program in Bhutan during the summer of 2010 (she's the blond with the bag over her shoulder). The three of us exchanged a few tricks of the trade while we were there!


I also managed to do a heck of a lot else while I was in the Boston area. Most importantly, I got to stay with my sister. Our time together was limited because I was in training all day and had a long commute back and forth between the SFS Headquarters in Salem, MA and her apartment near BU, but we went out for bagels together almost every morning and had a little time each night to catch up or make dinner together or watch F.R.I.E.N.D.S.! At the end of my course, my parents drove up to Boston to spend the weekend with us too. As Amanda and I both have summer birthdays, we had a joint celebration that included going to see the movie "Up" in a little theatre in Salem, going to a Red Sox game (they shut out the Toronto blue jays), going out for sushi on our last night, and just spending some good ol' QT together. It really made my whole trip!


By the time I got back here to the TCI, my many nights of inadequate sleep had really caught up with me. I sat down with Brett to unpack all of the items we had ordered online and had delivered to my sister's. (You can't really buy anything here, and now that we're both divers we were in need of some more equipment plus a few other odds and ends.) However, as you can see above, I couldn't keep my eyes open for long. I fell asleep in the middle of all of our new gear and my half-unpacked luggage, while Brett got sidetracked reading the manual for the underwater camera we just bought. (That book on the bed in front of me is a field guide for the birds of TCI that Brett's mom bought for us!) I'd better get rested up and back into the swing of things soon though, because the next batch of students arrive in just 4 days and there's lots to do before they get here!

Filling Tanks

With all the diving that goes on down here, filling tanks is always a job that needs doing. Recently I had the SFS Dive Safety Officer train me in how to use the compressor so that I can help fill them too. That's what I spent a few hours doing this afternoon.

Filling Tanks

Filled Tanks

There's not much involved, really - just switching out tanks when they've filled and purging condensation that builds up in compressor. I figure (as a diver) its a good skill to know, and besides I need to earn my keep around here. In between switching tanks I was also working on some of the final edits for my article. I should have another draft complete soon, and hopefully the review process will go quickly.

Being Studious

This evening I went out on a dive and emptied one of those newly filled tanks. And, believe it or not, I saw another juvenile Smooth Trunkfish! I'm starting to wonder if they have a breeding season and now just happens to be when juveniles are abundant. I hope so. Jessee gets back tomorrow (granted she is able to make the connection in Provo), and she'll be thrilled if we can go find one.

Juvenile Smooth Trunkfish

This evening I saw something that made Jessee extremely envious: a juvenile Smooth Trunkfish. It's a tiny black and yellow-spotted fish about the size and shape of a pea! It's about the cutest dang thing that's ever been in the ocean. I had to call Jessee as soon as I could to tell her.

Juvenile Smooth Trunkfish

I made her guess what I'd seen. The conversation went something like this:

B: Guess what I saw!!
J: Oh my god, a Tiger Shark?!
B: Nope. Smaller.
J: Okay good. Give me a hint.
B: It's something you've always wanted to see.
J: A Kangaroo?
B: No. I don't think they swim.
J: Okay, give me another hint.
B: It's vastly smaller than a Tiger Shark - you could say, pea-sized.
J: You didn't! Awwww! I'm so jealous!
B: I did!
J: Awwww! ...uh, I have to go. I'm in a restaurant and I'm making a scene.

The juvenile Smooth Trunkfish barely have fins. They just sort of float around. We were able to scoot it out of its little hole and cup it in our hands for a close look. Its little mouth sticks out with little puckered fish lips. Smooth Trunkfish, odd-looking things themselves, are relatively common, but the juveniles are much less so and quite difficult to find, being that they are so small and probably spend most of their time hiding.

Adult Smooth Trunkfish

Video of Smooth Trunkfish

Manta Touring

This morning I did what is called "Manta Touring." Not, unfortunately, to see Manta Rays - they are uncommon in this area. Manta Touring is just the name they've given to this activity. Basically you get pulled around by a boat with your face in the water. Sort of like water skiing, except you start with your face in the water rather than end up there. The idea being that you can cover a lot of ground (err, water) and also keep up with some of the faster critters.

Setting up.

We were inspired to do it today because of the near glass-calm water. There's a newly formed tropical storm named Danny in the Atlantic (about 200 miles East of us), and from what I can tell from the satellite images, the southern end of it is countering the wind we normally get. We're expecting that to change as the storm moves over the Bahamas.

Touring

Anyhow, Manta Touring was fun. We didn't see as much as we hoped - really just a couple large Triggerfish (one Queen Triggerfish and one Ocean Triggerfish), and a few Barracudas that curiously (and ominously) come up to check you out. Because of that I felt a little bit like bait. As if I was being pulled around to lure some large creature up from the deep. This was especially the case when we went out over "The Blue" - the area where it's so deep you can see nothing but a deep blue color.

"The Blue"

Friendly Gecko

My company while Jessee is away.

Ransom

When I woke up this morning, it seemed unusually quiet. I was up a little early, so I didn't think much of it. But after about 45 minutes, I found out that it wasn't because everybody was sleeping in, but rather because they were out in search of a lost boat. The new moon brought unusually high tides in the recent days and, apparently, it caused our "rescue boat" to break free from its mooring last night. This was especially bad because it's the nicest of all the boats and worth something like $22,000 (the other three boats, only one of which is running at the moment, aren't worth one-tenth that).

Unlike the last time I was involved in a "lost boat" situation, I was in no way responsible for this incident. I could, however, sympathize for the others and was concerned that we were down to one functioning boat for a program entirely dependent on access to the water.

By the time I had figured out anything was going on, the first search party had already returned. They had searched a large area in the direction of the prevailing wind and current and even walked through a large tide flat for quite a distance only to find the shell of an old wreck. They returned empty handed. They had also attempted to request assistance from some of the fishermen that are friendly with SFS, but they had already left for the day.

After a short while, Will and I decided to go out and search a little more. We checked at the public dock first, hoping that somebody might have brought it back, but there was nothing. With Will driving I scanned the bay with binoculars (which is incredibly ineffective when the boat is shaking you all around). Not long had passed, however, when we spotted a fisherman towing our lost boat! We adjusted our course to meet up with them and decided we'd offer to give them our extra fuel for their trouble.

In hindsight, it's funny that we made this offer of fuel because the two fishermen demanded far greater compensation. They claimed, according to British Common Law, that they owned 1/3 of the recovered vessel and informed us that they wanted $5000 for it. We'd never heard of this law, but Will did know that some arcane "Laws of the Sea" that still existed (for instance, if you are in need of assistance at sea and you accept the bow line of another vessel, they have the right to ownership of your boat, but if you give them your bow line, then you retain ownership). Anyhow, they refused to hand the boat over to us there and towed it to the dock, where they planned to hold it for ransom.

At this point I decided to become only an observer, though I amused myself by contemplating a pirate-like attack to free our boat (in my imagination I was jumping from our speeding boat with a knife in my mouth and a parrot on my shoulder). Instead, Will contacted the center director who agreed to meet us at the dock to deal with the situation (slightly less dramatic). For the sake of brevity let's say the negotiations took up most of the day, but finally resulted in a payment of $700 for their trouble and lost day of fishing. The fishermen weren't happy about this, but it turns out that TCI does have a law about recovered vessels and it states that "reasonable compensation" is due in situations such as this. Fortunately for SFS, most of the other fisherman and bystanders who had gathered around and, more importantly, the police thought that $5000 was not "reasonable."

The recovered boat.

$700 even seems a bit steep, if you ask me. It was a sensitive situation though. SFS needs to maintain positive relations with the fishermen (if not for the sake of community, for the fact that the boat could easily be vandalized by unhappy neighbors). Some here at SFS were, understandably, upset that the two fishermen expected payment for retrieving the boat. We intended to compensate them for their trouble and time from the beginning, but their exploitation of the situation was not justified. On numerous occasions in the past SFS staff and boats have been involved in assisting stranded or broken down boats of locals, and some here felt the same courtesy should be extended in our direction. I think, however, this is problem for all people or institutions that are viewed as "outsiders" to a community. Especially when that outsider is believed to have considerable wealth (which is actually not the case for SFS - there is considerable debt, not an endless budget). As I've mentioned before, I feel like we're largely separated from the South Caicos community. We do outreach (i.e. swimming lessons) on Saturdays when school is in session, but that doesn't feel like a very meaningful connection to me. I wish we did more to integrate, but not being very extroverted, I'm not the best person to make that happen. At the same time, I felt slightly more connected to some local people who came to our defense and argued in our favor.