Final collection before heading to Suva (8/11)

In two days I head back to Suva for a week where I’ll extract RNA from the coral I’ve collected from my field sites. Today was the last collection. I got up early this morning, in time for low tide. After breakfast, I gathered the necessary equipment and headed out to the shallows where my nutrient experiment lies. I was hoping (against the odds) that the changing phases of the moon had not drastically shifted the tides. When the moon is full, I can walk to the site at low tide and the water never gets deeper than mid-calf with the incoming waves. As the moon changes, the tides shift and the site becomes covered with water, too shallow to snorkel, to deep to wade. Today, the heavens were against me. I could get right up to the site, but I couldn’t get anything done. The water was knee high on the outgoing waves, and waist high coming in. I was either lifted off the ground or knocked off balance with every movement of water. Try as I might, I couldn’t even maintain my position long enough to tell what replicate was in front of me. I headed back to the lodge, soggy and disappointed.

My only option was to attempt collection at high tide, which was going to be difficult. I passed the time waiting for the tide to change by reading, writing and getting organized. At 1:30 I made my way back to the beach. A survey of the water told me I was too early. High tide wasn’t until 3:30, so I waited on shore for a half-hour. When my patience ran out, I geared up and jumped in the water. It takes me at least 20 minutes to swim to my site, so by the time I made it there, the water was just a bit deeper. The geography of my site is such that to the right of the area is a steep drop off into the channel of 20 – 40 feet and to the left is shallow water (< 3 feet) where the waves break creating a foamy white ambience, like floating in soda pop. The corals I’m working on are situated in roughly 6 feet of water. This means that I can’t reach them without holding my breath and diving down. Even with a weight belt on, this is difficult, especially in such a high-energy environment. I would dive down, ass up like a duck, and attempt to grab onto anything without spines. If the waves didn’t drag me away, I’d hold on for dear life and go about collecting. If they did, I’d kick as hard as I could against the drag to get back to the point of interest, usually only to be pulled away in the other direction. After several attempts, I finally got the hang of it. I felt like giving up a number of times, but the task needed to get done, one way or the other. So I did it.

Collecting the corals was very difficult, especially since I wanted to do it in a way that wouldn’t kill the whole colony. I think I managed it though. The other task at hand was to pull up the site. This meant removing the nails from the substrate and picking up the nutrient bags that had been nailed down around the corals. This part was actually kind of fun. I would hook the forked end of my hammer around a nail and wait for a wave. The surge was so strong that hanging onto the hammer required a fair bit of muscle. The feel of the water ripping around me was exhilarating, like free falling from a plane. I finished the whole process in two and a half hours. The swim back to shore nearly killed me. I had placed all of the nails and nutrient bags in a sack around my weight belt. The drag from the heavy bag and the unusually strong current made for the toughest swim of my life. Once in shallow water, I literally crawled the rest of the way to shore. I looked up and saw Zach sitting in the shallows just as worn out and pathetic as me. We laughed at the site of each other and then headed back to the lodge.

After prepping my samples, I sat and contemplated the day. It was really hard work and I honestly didn’t think I’d get it done, at least all in one day. It felt really good. Now, tomorrow can be spent leisurely packing my stuff for the trip to Suva and maybe even catching some rays, cocktail in hand.

It was a good day.