Success!

August 3, 2006
After the shark scare on Tuesday, I thought I would skip the field work and go to Sigatoka. I didn’t. I ended up getting back in the water. However, this time I went to the side of the channel that I worked on last time I was here. The water is clearer, I know exactly where the corals are, and I’ve only seen a (small) shark there once. I just couldn’t let another day go by without accomplishing anything in the field. It seems like Fiji has been deliberately keeping me from her oceans. For three days last week pouring rain and typhoon-like winds kept us inside. So, Amy and I didn’t get very much work done in the field. However, on Saturday we caught a break in the morning, exactly when we needed it. We wanted to go to the Tabu (pronounced Tam-boo) area, which is the Marine Management Protection Area owned by the village. The site is so shallow that you can only get to it at high tide. Even at high tide, the corals are only in a few feet of water. It’s not the most beautiful or glamorous area I’ve ever seen. There’s a lot of algae cover and sand, but it’s my favorite place to snorkel. The Tabu area is off limits to most activities, including fishing, so there are a lot of beautiful fish and huge mollusks. It’s also the only place I’ve seen octopi in Fiji. Anyway, Amy and I caught just enough of a break in the weather, exactly during high tide, to get out and collect a coral called Pocillopora damicornis. Amy has a type of bacteria that is a known pathogen of this coral. We infected the coral in a make-shift wet lab that we’ve set up on the porch of our lodge. Amy is going to extract the coral to check for anti-microbial compounds and I’m going to look for genes that are differentially expressed in response to disease infection. If all goes as planned it should be a very interesting paper.
On Sunday, we weren’t allowed to do any work or go to the beach for any reason. It’s the “Day of Rest”, so no field work that day either, which was frustrating since it was the first beautiful day in a string bad weather. We managed to get work done in our room though. We were “writing letters to our families” as far as anyone knew. Monday the visibility was terrible, and Tuesday was the shark. This is why on Tuesday afternoon, I chose to get back in the water rather than go to Sigatoka. I collected the coral, Porites lobata, to expose to pig effluent. It was better than nothing. I spent the rest of the day re-scheduling my weeks in Tagaqe… shifting my experiments and collection times. I also redesigned my field experiment so that I don’t have to swim over the murky water where the shark was spotted.
When Amy got home that night she could see that I was stressed and concerned about getting my work done. We discussed our work plan for Thursday and for the next few days. We woke up early on Thursday, put together our field bags and gathered up our gear. By 9 am we were on the beach and making an entry plan. To my delight, we found the corals that I had been seeking for the past few days. I spent a grueling 4+ hours (in a row!) in the water sledge hammering nails into the reef, numbering coral colonies at each sight, chiseling small pieces of coral for my first collection, and taking water and sediment samples. I did this for 3 sites, 5 coral colonies per site. It was exhausting, but extremely fulfilling. I finally accomplished what I set out to do, or at least an important part of it. Today will be just as busy, and I hope, just as fulfilling.