The Far East

Today made my second trip to the east end of an island to collect sand this summer. In July, I went to the east end of Catalina island to collect sediment and today I went to the east end of Palmyra atoll. The east end can be very difficult to get to because well Palmyra is in the middle of nowhere and lots of open ocean swell pass by the island. We got lucky and today was very calm. Our first dive was on the south east tip of the east terrace. First thing I noticed when I jumped in the water were sharks and lots of them then I noticed that the entire bottom was hard coral rubble and coral. The hard substrate is not very useful when your task is to collect 25 bags of sand. The task of collecting sand was further complicated by the ripping current and for Paul it was made it almost impossible to collect sand because he had to hold the buoy so that our captain can keep track of us. It was tough but I managed to get 6 bags of sand. I am happy just to have the 6 bags not just cause it was difficult to get them but because the east end is completely untouched by the military dredging and could represent the potential to really understand the native microbial population of palmyra or at least the actinobacteria population.

Since the current was far too strong we decided to move up onto the eastern terrace. Here we found tons of sand creating rivers that seemed to flow through the coral spurs. All the snorkeling was in less then 30 feet of water so it was easy to cover large amount of ground and collect lots samples. After collecting 50 of these types of samples we moved to the northeast part where the atoll has a dramatic wall sloping down quickly to 1000 feet. We dove in 60 feet of water and found the most pristine diving yet on palmyra. After the dive we went out to collect a deep sample, we actually did manage to bring some sediment to the surface but on our second deployment of the sand grabber we encountered something that bit the find and bent it, so we called it a day with over 100 samples of sand.


The pictures above are from today collection trip and the sunset photo is from the bbq we had last night. At the bbq we had sloppy joes and watched hermit crabs figh over food droppings. Did I mention the food here is wonderful.