A very tropical assortment of happenings lately. Today we went out in the lagoon boat and anchored at the inside of penguin spit where the reef is in less than 15 feet. This is a completely different habitat then diving on the outside of penguin spit. The waves crash over the reef crest and then inside you get where we dove today. The sediment is scarce but since we were scuba diving in less then 15 feet of water it was relatively easy and we had plenty of bottom time to get sand and complete our other task. Our mission went above and beyond the usual call of duty, pun intended because today we were collecting Parrot fish poop. The poop is going to be used by another graduate student at SIO to culture bacteria. Unfortunately there are no pictures of the pooping because my camera is not working properly however I can tell you parrot fish poop a lot and often.
Last night we went out on a night jungle walk to photograph the famous Coconut crab which is know to tear open whole coconuts, it is also the world largest land crustacean. Birgus latro, is the largest land living arthropod.
bnat
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