Palmyra Day 3 and 4

Yesterday we went out to scuba dive on the northwest side of the atoll. The first thing we noticed was that Halimeda is everywhere. Most of the 'sand' is composed of pieces of Halimeda. This was also the first dive using my underwater camera. Since one of our main missions is to collect sediments this was my first task during the dive. During the dive we collected 20 samples of the sediment. We take the samples back to the laboratory, place them in a laminar flow hood to dry. The next day when the samples are dried we use a foam plug to stamp out the sediment onto petri dishes with growth media. Then we wait to see what grows on the plate. Mostly bacteria will grow. The bacteria that we are most interested in take 2 weeks or more to grow so this is just the start of our search for marine actinobacteria.

In the day one blog I said that I would not be talking about the history of this island but well it turns out that this island has a very important and sad recent history as an air base of the U.S. military. During the 1940's the military dredged almost the entire atoll to make a large surface area of land, create a longer deeper lagoon and create a passage for boats into the lagoon. The island was also heavily fortified as we found out today during our hike. The construction of the airbase decimated what must have been a beautiful lagoon.

During the hike we found what must have been weapons bunkers, defensive posts and on the tip of the island we found a large platform that contained two gun turrets. The bunkers were totally camouflaged and clearly built to withstand attack. We also found a two story concrete building which was not clear what it was used for. In the library here an album of declassified pictures show that the island once had many many buildings all over the island. But interestingly none of the west end with the bunkers are shown in the pictures, I am guessing they are still classified.

The saddest part about the exploration today was that we noticed much of the island was created from the dredging of the lagoon as evidenced by the presence of tons of coral rubble. The other sad story was that we also found thousands of dead clams of the species Tridacna giga. Tridacna is the very colorful species of clam people often keep in aquariums. The inner lagoon must have been carpeted with them but now all that is left is the dead shells. I can only imagine that the military felt that establishment of bases in the pacific superseded the need to preserve the worlds coral reefs. It is truly sad to me because this island is always described to as one of the most isolated and pristine reefs in the world. While the outer reef seems relatively healthy the lagoon has clearly been destroyed.

Anyway I am going to post some pics from the dive, I guess I will show a picture of one of the numerous sharks that followed us throughout our dive..