Day 5 and 6 Bumphead Wrasses

Yesterday we took one of the small boats and ventured through the lagoon to the far east end of the atoll. We docked our boat on a coral berm and snorkeled on the reef crest. The reef crest was amazing and seemed like the most pristine coral garden I have ever seen. The brightest purple Montipora species and the healthiest looking Pocillopora corals. I was both sad and excited to see Tridacna all over the place but was sad because is is what the western side must have looked like before the military dredged it. In addition to the normal sediment collecting mission we were also helping out one of the other scientists on the island. She is studying the Bumphead wrasse, these are the largest known wrasses and are named for the huge tumor looking bump on their forehead. We found a group of eight of them and followed them for about a half an hour. These massive wrasses use there beaks to bite of and eat pieces of calcareous coral. I observed them actually munching of large pieces of coral it was quite a site to see. Our second collection involved hiking over the coral berm that we docked on to go to the outer reef. The habitat was extremely different from the calm reef crest. The coral living here clearly were used to constant wave action. Most of the coral we saw were table like coral and were clearly very strong although I saw several of the coral flipped upside down, not much soft sediment out in this area. The other thing on the outer reef was sharks, I saw three different ones they seemed very curious but were spooked by our presence.

On our journey back to station we had to navigate through the old causeway that was built to connect cooper island with island on the south, this causeway has caused havoc on the lagoon as it has cutoff the continuous flushing of the western lagoon and is probably contributed to the lack of coral on this end. Apparently there is some heated debates that have occured as to weather or not to remove it.

Also on the way back to station we stopped at the structure where Buck lived during his time here. Buck is the person convicted of the double murders. His house is really just another military building. It was scary because they have made a dummy sit at the table in the building so as we came upon it Paul flinched severely when he saw what looks like a man sitting at a table.