Hawaii Fishing and Seafood Festival

Yesterday was the Hawaiian Fishing and Seafood Festival. There were a bunch of vendors peddling their goods and a few little activities set up. Mom, the first picture is for you. It was the Hawaii Civic Center that was showing people how do to traditional weaving with palm fronds.  Unfortunately the ribbon on the bottom left hand side of the picture was not for sale, otherwise I would have bought it for you!

The best part of the festival was really the big spread of fish they had set up to show what all of the local fish are out here.  As you can see, there is an octopus in this picture (although technically not a fish...).  I just love all of the colors! Look at that parrot fish (Uhu in Hawaiian). Sorry it is a bit blurry, there were a lot of people around and it was difficult to get a good shot.  They had set up this giant table where they have the fish auction every morning on Pier 38.  I still haven't been to the fish auction, something I will have to remedy. I was embarrassed to have to admit I had never been to the Festival before, but it's even worse I haven't been to the auction! What kind of marine biologist am I?

Here, they had set up a little table with all of the popular cuts of meat from the fish displayed on the previous table.

There was a guy selling fish prints as well. I've always wanted to get one of an Octopus, so I did! Not the giant orange one (way out of my price league) but a good one none-the-less.

There was a nice educational table set up with a guy hanging onto this lovely female day octopus.  I chatted with a few people at the festival and this guy knew who I was.  Not my face, but when I told him I study tako out at HIMB he asked if I was the one studying the he'e pali (the Hawaiian word for the rock octopus).  So, apparently people know there is someone out here studying them, and that someone is me!

It was a fun little excursion and I bought some lovely fresh fish at the fish market.  Today I am on Coconut trying to get a grip on my genetics work and I just had a very productive meeting with two of my Committee members.  Feeling a little less like a complete idiot today. We'll see how long that lasts. 

And to close out, the semi-obligatory sunset shot.  Won't be as many of these now since I will be moving back to Manoa.  But, they were nice while they lasted....

Insightful Article

This is a good article about women in science, or rather women everywhere. I thought it was definitely applicable in my case...

World Octopus Day

Alright, I am a couple of days late--the other day it was WORLD OCTOPUS DAY!  Possibly because it was Oct and 8? 8 legs for octopus and Oct for OCTopus.  Very exciting. They are pretty fantastic critters! Glad they have their own day of appreciation.

I'm FINALLY at work after sitting in my car for the past hour.  There was an accident on the way to Coconut and it was on the Likelike so I was stuck. No where to go until they cleared out. Fortunately, no one was hurt. Unfortunately, it appeared as though the police were just blocking the road for no reason for about 45 minutes after the car had been towed and the man taken to the hospital.  He was up and walking around after her flipped his car, but I guess they took him to the hospital as a precaution. Not sure why the cops kept the road blocked except to make everyone frustrated...  At least the view was nice.

Alright, I am off to test primers in my octopus babies to see if I will finally be able to figure out the paternity of these guys!

I have started swimming out to the end out the reef--the other day I saw a turtle!  There is a red windsock out there, but I don't think you can see it in this picture. It's about a 250m swim each way. 

Some friends of mine just got published in Nature, a very prestigious scientific journal.  It's pretty interesting, but also super depressing... Also, what was this seminar and how did I not know about it? Poop! I want to get into Nature...

This month I am working in my life history chapter which requires a lot of data entry and measuring terribly smelly dead octopuses... Back to work!

Sunsets

It's hard to be unhappy when I have this waiting at the end of the day... I still find a way though. Oh PhD, will I ever have you? YES! You will be mine, oh yes, you will be mine...

Check out THIS video--I can't seem to upload it to my blog. Really nice nature :)

Double Rainbow

Recently, I have felt as though the universe is shitting directly on my face, but every once and a while I am reminded that I should be grateful.  This morning I was treated with another lovely rainbow outside of Steven's window (double rainbow!).  And the sunset last night was none to shabby either...

In the unending discombobulating life event that has been moving off of Coconut, I found a few interesting pieces of memorabilia that I decided to photo document. These are the posters that I shot at a while back when Kevin Flannigan taught me how to use a Glock! I wasn't a terrible shot :) I kept thinking about the guy who is in the bottom picture and how he feels having been the model that people shoot at, day in, day out.   I suppose you can't really see his face, but you can see he has a wedding band. I wonder what his story is.

Just had a pretty productive and extremely helpful meeting with a committee member and feeling like maybe there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Ceramics class tonight. Back to work for now.