Moon

It is a beautiful cheshire cat moon tonight. There is nothing that makes you feel as humbled and small as standing out on deck, looking at the moon with a small glow on the horizon and nothing but darkness and water surrounding you. It made my heart break a little at the beauty of it...

I guess I'm feeling a little nostalgic already and the cruise isn't even over. We have three days left and then I'll be back in Honolulu. Back to reality, proposal writing, catching up, classes, diving, responsibility, and poverty. I think Les has decided I am going to study zoanthids. Tonight he and Scott gave me a sample to do genetics with. I'm feeling a bit defeated... I'm gonna do cephalopods! I'm gonna do it til they tell me I can't--which is in a few months...

Yesterday we saw an octopus--a new species (for our cruise, not in biology)--but it swam away too fast. Then we saw the coolest little black squid with weird cat eyes. Today we did our deepest dive 2200 meters and saw many little picnogonids (which are my new favorite animal!), decapods, fish, bamboo corals and the like. I think tomorrow may be our last dive and then it will be transit days til we get back to Ft. Lauderdale.

Here is a pic of a picnogonid (sea spider) another dumbo octopus :) and the squid with cat eyes curled up on the sand--it's hard to tell he's a squid, but I promise he is!





I'm going to miss being rocked to sleep every night by the waves. I'm going to miss living on the ocean. Even though I live in Hawaii, I don't see the ocean nearly as much as I want to. I sound so spoiled! No more complaining. Where did I put my complaint bracelet?