Weather

Yesterday was yet another successful dive! It began quite slowly, but in the last two hours we hit upon another small garden of corals. It was certainly not as diverse as our last site, but fruitful nonetheless. As we were bringing the ROV up, we had a nasty bit of weather and lost a couple of our science team to sea sickness... I jumped in and took over some of the duties of my comrade grad student :) She does so much for her lab! She's in a lab with two boys (men technically, I guess...) who really seem to take advantage of her kindness. They just sort of assume she'll clean everything up and do all the heavy lifting and they don't offer to help--it's kind of pissing me off. But I make sure to help her whenever I can and I think she appreciates it.

One of my duties for Les is fixing the coral samples in Formalin. I wear gloves but always manage to get covered in it anyway. I guess a little dose of formalin a day will help preserve me--maybe I should bathe in it and never age...unfortunately, I don't think it works that way. In fact, it's a pretty potent carcinogen. Oh well.

Also, last night, I was handling some Hollande's fixative and noticed later that my hand had turned yellow--like someone had gone at it with a highlighter. I wasn't worried, but the French girl (whom I've discovered works at the French Museum of Natural History--awesome!!) was concerned. I asked Les about it and he said I'll be fine, but I should probably wear gloves next time. It's funny, he is so nonchalant about chemicals he is giving me bad habits. The other grad student said, "Yeah, but he has already reproduced and doesn't have to worry about the chemicals entering his body!" I hadn't thought about it that way--I'm going to have mutant babies! MUTANT BABIES! MWAHAHA--they will take over the world.

Aaaaanyway, because of the weather last night and this morning, we are getting a late start. Apparently, there is a front coming in this weekend and we are gonna have to "hide" behind one of the islands...it should be fun.

Also, I discovered when we have "weather," we lose internet. So, I may be incommunicado at some point...

Hokay, back to work!