First, I got there and he said--do you have your bathing suit on? I said yes (thank goodness I did). Apparently the pants I was wearing were not good for the water, so he made me take them off. So, that's how it started. Also, one of the professors (his boss) came along with us--I might end up working with him too. We'll see. Anyway, then we climbed down the rocks (easier said than done) towards the water. The rocks are giant and slippery and steep and the waves come about every three minutes and crash against me and the rocks. Not super safe... And tonight was pretty mild apparently. So, I had to channel my inner mountain goat and climb along the rocks, stepping on the urchins and cowries (giant cowries!!!) and avoid the occasional tsunami. There were a couple of times when I was hit hard out of the blue and the guys asked if I was ok. I felt kind of silly. I was trying to keep up, but I was moving pretty slowly and my bathing suit was falling off. I'm hoping that I can get better at this... I felt like I was being watched to see if I could pass the test of studying this species. I'm not sure that I did. But, we found six of them--actually I should say, they found six. I managed not to die, which I suppose was an accomplishment of some sort. At the end of the night, Chris (that is the guy's name who is studying them at the moment) drove me home and talked about some possible studies. So that was promising. I'm really excited though. I think that this could be fun. I just need to get it all figured out. But I'm excited to have some ideas at least :) Yay!
On Friday I went with my oceanography class to Paiko Bay to do take some sediment samples again. Here are some photos.
3 comments:
Re. Heather as mountain goat: I have no fears for you in this regard. I recall you leaping about the summit of Huayna Pichu like a hyrax on speed while Vanessa and I clung to the rocks like acrophobic barnacles.
Aloha, I enjoy looking at your blog. Cool stuff. What caught me off gaurd. Was that today on november 4th i had taken a picture of a moth.. but it was a different one from the one you had posted. It was grey, and had a beautiful design. What had led me to your blog was researching rock tako! Me and my friend go and fish every once and a while and recently we stumbled on a rock tako sitting right on the cliff in a pool. Check the pictures on my page if you get a chance. Hope you enjoy. Aloha!
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